
Glass _2QQ 
Book 4-—-1 _~ 



WATCHEKS FOE TEE DAWN. 




Frontispiece. 



The Conversations at St. Cyr. 



See page 267. 



WATCHERS FOR THE DAWN, 



AND OTHER 



^iite of Cjprtkn tf^arattar. 



By IES. W. E. LLOYD, 

Author of " Pictures of Heroes, "&c. 




*•* -ft?OPHETESS M<^ vUG " 
POR HER MOTHER. 

See page 255. 
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY JAMES GODWIN. 

SECOND EDITION. 



LONDON: JAMES HOGG AND SON, 

YORK STREET, GO VENT GARDEN. 



©•v. 



WAXGHEBTT0 




AND OTHER 



<~y/?K/j2-, 



Sfote of Christian Cjfatactir. 



Mrs. W. R. LLOYD. 



WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY JAMES GODWIN. 



NEW YORK: 
VIRTUE AND YORSTON, PUBLISHERS. 



CONTENTS. 



Preface p. vii 

THE LAMP IN THE CELL. 

The cell the only refuge — Book-collecting — England's first 
pictures — The slake of Jarrow — Singing-school of England — 
Bede's journeys — The monks at work — Quiet heroism — Bede's 
authorship — Seeing life — " Write quickly ! " — Taking sanctuary 
— "The chair of Bede" — A cresset-lamp in monkish cell . p. 9 

SIGNAL-FIBES. 

The poor-scholar's purse — Slavic literature — From Oxford to 
Prague — The Bohemian knight-errant — WyclifF has opened the 
shell — The " House of Bread " — "A miracle ! A miracle ! " — 
Miracle-working denounced — The archbishop startled — Bohemian 
nationality — The man of the people — The academic feud — The 
links in the chain — Which of the three is pope ? — Excommunication 
and interdict — The young artisans — The "ground-swell" — "I 
appeal" — Council of Constance — The safe-conduct — From Prague 
to Constance — "iVbwwe have thee!" — Imprisonment and illness 
— Huss dreams a dream — The Pope in the prison — " Thanks for thy 
safe-conduct" — "Wilt thou recant ?" — The Kaiser's conscience — 
"No faith to be kept with heretics" — Sigismund blushes — The 
secular arm — A little heap of ashes — Where is Jerome ? — The 
knight-errant of reform — A voice beneath the window — Panting 
for deliverance — Jerome speaks — He recants his recantation — 
What said the official orator — The "second Cato " — Sparks from 
the fires of the field p. 24 

WATCHERS FOE THE DAWN. 

John of Wesel: "Great Susanna" — The creed in the box — 
The jubilee — The. cardinal and his strong box — The jingle of the 
coins — John of three hundred books — "The Treasure of the 
Church " — Wesel' s protest — Wesel runs away — The old man before 
the Inquisition — Alas for John of Wesel ! — To the same dungeon 
— Imprisonment in a monastery p. 66 

John Wessel: "Brethren of the common lot" — The hole in 
the wall — 0]d scholasticism — "Master of Contradictions" — Bread 
and books — The dogs of Lyons — The Bible instead of the bishopric 
— Luther's opinion of Wessel — Wessel' s last days — His por- 
trait p. 80 



IV CONTENTS. 

THE FRIENDSHIPS OF THE REFORMATION. 

Castle-life in the fifteenth century — " Make a clerk of little 
Ulric" — Alone on the highway of life — Ulric turns troubadour — 
Ulric besieged — His opinions — Two warfares in hand — Reuchlin 
dies — "Ulric is still nothing !" — Ulric gets a title — "Ulric is 
'somebody' after all" — Three candidates for empire — Ulric re- 
nounces his inheritance — A warm-hearted letter — The Inquisitor 
frightened — The castle of Ebernburg — " The flower of German 
knighthood " — " I have dared it " — The citation to Worms — A plot 
— " I shall go on " — Bayard and Sicken gen meet — The league 
prospers not — Sickengen wounded and dying — Ulric turns to 
Erasmus — Alone on the road again — To Zurich next — Broken, 
but never bent p. 91 

THE ARTISTS OF THE REFORMATION 

Albert on his art-travels — He gives his hand to a fury — The 
artist's home — The worrying wife — Kaiser Max hears of Albert — 
Albert draws before Kaiser Max— An artistic fraud — Albert makes 
friendship with Raphael — Albert's portraits — Rauch's statue of 
Albert — He escapes to the Low Countries — Lucas of Leyden and 
Jan Mabuse — The paper court-dress — Albert gives his heart to 
the Reformation — Albert's "Apostles " — The first Protestant work 
of art — Albert's leading characteristics — His death and burial — The 
painter's birth-place p. 126 

Lucas Cranach : Luke on pilgrimage — The shrines of Wit- 
tembarg — Frederic the Wise — Luke at a bridal— Luke's printing- 
press — Luke's strong Protestantism * — Luther at home — Luke's 
three noble masters — The " Star of Austria " — The game of chess 
— Lucas Cranach before Charles — Luke chooses captivity — John 
Frederic's release — " 1 shall soon follow her " , . p. 139 

THE COBBLER-POET OF NUREMBERG. 

The singing-school — The meister-singer — The minnie-singer — 
The five years' wandering— At Salzburg — Hans a huntsman — 
Home from the " Wanderschaft" — Nuremberg and its people — 
Hans settles and marries — The " silver wedding " — Hans' portrait 
— Hans a hymn-writer — "The solace of the aged" — Bidden to 
make shoes, not verses — Hans a man of learning — Nuremberg rich 
in great men — Hans a voluminous poet — The modern singing- 
school — His Protestant writings— His love of liberty — Hans the 
founder of the German drama — His old age and death — His 
epitaph . p. 154 

"THE TENTH MUSE." 
Fulvio Morato — The Inquisition and the schoolmasters — A 



CONTENTS. V 

literary circle — The Bible and the relics — The literary circle meets 
again — Curio in trouble again — The Inquisition outwitted — 
A fresh enterprise — Curio and the carving-knife — The "Tenth 
Muse " invited to court — The bright little court of Ferrara — Secret 
assemblies in the palace — Duchess Eenee and her friends — Olympia 
lectures in the Academy — Anxiety keeps her humble — The father 
dies — In disgrace at court, she graces her home — She visits a 
fellow -believer in prison — A young German student — The " Muse" 
is wooed and won — Andreas travels in quest of fortune — Count 
Fugger and his gold — Olympia goes to Germany — The " Eose of 
Augsburg'* — The long-sought professorship — No compromises — 
Happy life at Schweinfurt — Albert of Brandenburg — The phy- 
sician falls sick — Albert beaten by the dying Maurice — Maurice's 
lax code — Schweinfurt in flames — Life saved, and naught beside — 
The professorship at last — The tattered fortunes mended — Death of 
Olympia — Andreas and Emilio soon follow her . . p. 178 

THE EED SILK BANNER. 

Mixture of races — The story of Seville — Eodrigo de Valero 
disappears — Eodrigo reappears, and has much to say — He talks 
with the priests— He is summoned before the Inquisition — The 
Church relieves him of his wealth — The "sanbenito" — Imprison- 
ment for life — Eodrigo dies at San Lucar — The " holy office" in full 
work — Feudal society in winter — " Listen, my lords ! " — Associa- 
tion between Provence and Spain — " Julian the Little " and his 
wine-casks — The Eeformers in disguise — Tauler and the Mystics 
— Influential works of Valdes — The fate of his books — Character 
of Valdes — Statistics of the Spanish Inquisition — House of Eefuge 
for the homeless poor — Spain admitted to "pratique" • p. 216 

THE FAIE PIETIST. 

The little Benedictine — Eehearsal of a martyrdom — A fugitive 
queen — " Lux in tenebris " — The devotee and her distractions — 
The successful suitor — An alarming introduction — The spiritual 
" director " — Peace within and trouble without — The sick beauty 
and the mirror — Madame Guy on a widow — The confessor in the 
dark church — The call to the mission-life — The cross and the 
crown — Brother Anselm the hermit ■ — The bishop and the lady — 
Petty persecutions — The chalet attacked — Crowds of disciples — 
The Grande Chartreuse — At Paris again— Fifty thousand exiled 
families — Marriage of her daughter — Friendship with Fenelon — 
Madame de Main tenon — Poison — Madame Guy on before the 
bishops— The Bastile— The " Man of the Iron Mask "—The tomb 
kept its secrets — The recreations of the Bastile — The term of exile 
over . * •••p. 240 



SUBJECTS OF THE ILLUSTRATIONS. 



PAGB 

The Conversations at St. Cyr (Frontispiece). 



The Last Words of the Venerable Bede 



Jerome before the Council . • . .61 

The Flower of German Chivalry • • ,116 

The Poet's "Silver Wedding". . . .164 

The Duchess Kenee's Secret Assemblies . .190 

The Troubadour in the Olden Time . • . 228 

The Little Prophetess maeing Crosses for her 

Mother {Vignette) , . , . see 254 



21 



PREFACE. 



The characters which have been selected for study 
in the following pages are not the most conspicuous 
of their day. The greatest man leads his fellows 
and leaves his stamp on his age; the second man, 
though he outstrips the mass of his contemporaries, 
is nevertheless in some sort shaped by the times 
which have produced him, and is hence the more 
representative man of the two. The first embodies 
a new and great idea ; the second reveals the general 
need, and points the common aim. 

Bede led a scholar's life in a quiet northern monas- 
tery, but he trimmed a " Lamp in the Cell," which 
showed how great was the surrounding darkness, for 
its glimmer is yet seen across the glooms of eleven 
intervening centuries. 

John Huss and Jerome of Prague were but fol- 
lowers of our own Wy cliff; yet the flame of their 
undying faith was a " Signal-Fire" which lighted 
the whole horizon. 

John of Wesel and John Wessel were born in the 
night-season ; but from the narrow windows of their 
University-cells they were patient " Watchers for 
the Dawn" that was then nigh at hand. 

Ulric von Hiitten and Franz von Sickengen were 
chivalrous pioneers rather than great leaders; yet 
they clasped each other's mailed hand in noble 



Vlll PREFACE. 

brotherhood, and represented the faithful " Friend- 
ships of the Reformation." 

Albert Durer and Lucas Cranach silently cut their 
stirring thoughts in wood, graved them with the fine 
point of their burine, or left them glowing for ever on 
the canvas ; but the while they wrought they were 
carefully preserving the changing features of the age, 
or tracing those of its heroes ; and Albert Durer and 
Lucas Cranach are emphatically the " Artists of the 
Reformation." 

Hans Sachs, the Meister-Sanger, heard the com- 
mon talk of the times, and embodied it in song ; and 
the " Cobbler-poet of Nuremberg" struck his lyre 
with such a hand of power that thousands joined in 
the chorus. 

Olympia Morata presents herself as a graceful 
impersonation of the scholar-life of Italy in the 
Reformation age ; while it is fine to see her fling 
away the chaplet with which her admirers had 
crowned her as the " Tenth Muse," and choose in its 
stead the unfading amaranth of the Christian. 

Rodrigo de Valero and Juan de Valdes were 
standard-bearers of a " noble army of martyrs ;" 
but army and standards were alike swept away, and 
the " Red Silk Banner" of the Inquisition was left 
to shadow the land. 

In fine, Madame G-uyon represents the natural 
recoil of numberless souls from the outward ceremo- 
nial, the priestly pretension, and the worldly spirit 
of a haughty hierarchy; and the " Fair Pietist" 
became the centre of an extensive reactionary move- 
ment. 

Thus the characters which have been sketched in 
these pages, though individual in feature, are types 
of a class, and expressions of the times. 



THE LAMP IN" THE CELL. 



It is a truism to say that objects are indistinctly 
seen in the very early hours of the morning, before 
the light of day has touched the hills^ and flooded 
the valleys and the plains. Yet this may be em- 
phatically said of those historic figures which are 
seen moving about in our own land in the mists 
of the dawning, while night is still lying on the 
greater portion of the landscape. The outlines of 
such dimly-seen objects are often exaggerated; their 
attitudes sometimes improbable — nay, even impos- 
sible. But there is one personage whom, once seen, 
the intermediate ages have never forgotten, and who 
is still spoken of, 1100 years after his era, as the 
" Venerable Bede." 

Bede did not earn his honourable title by living 
on into extreme old age, when the brows are sur- 
rounded by that silver coronet which makes even 
the thoughtless call its wearer " venerable." But 
his name is so illustrious in the annals of Christian 
literature, and in the history of early science, — he 
was so distinguished in a corrupt age for the beauty 
of his piety, the purity of his morals, and the gentle 
humility of his spirit, — that all succeeding time has 



10 THE CELL THE ONLY REFUGE. 

enjoined that lie should be treated with "reverent 
regard" and " awful respect." His Anglo-Saxon 
brethren called him Beda; but when the echo of 
the good man's name reached the English period of 
our language, the "a" became lost in the dumb "e" 
of the popular speech, and we now always speak of 
the learned monk of Wearmouth as the " Venerable 
Bede." 

He was born in 672, in the parish of Jarrow, an 
extensive district which lies on the southern side 
of the Tyne, below Newcastle. The exact place of 
his birth is supposed to have been Monkton, one of 
the very earliest endowments of that famous monas- 
tery of Wearmouth, which soon after this date was 
founded by Benedict Biscop. The foundation-stone 
of this " religious house" was laid in troublous 
times ; for this was one of the stormiest periods of 
the Saxon heptarchy. Kings were stepping into 
view, struggling for the mastery, and then disap- 
pearing as suddenly as they had started into exist- 
ence. The only way of securing a quiet death-bed 
was to assume the cowl and to lie down upon the 
hard pallet of some grated cell. The Anglo-Saxons 
saw no fewer than ten kings and eleven queens fly 
from the perils instead of the attractions of the 
world, and take refuge in convents. It is a refresh- 
ment, in the midst of all this convulsive movement 
of the outer life, the conflict of battle, the thrust of 
the assassin, or the cowardly evasion of the respon- 
sibilities of station, to follow a story so tranquil as 
that of the pious and scholarly Bede. It is like 
turning away from the fret and foam of a torrent 
to track the gentle lapse of the woodland stream. 

As soon as the little Bede had reached his seventh 
year, he was sent to Wearmouth to learn letters 
under the presidency of Benedict Biscop, Benedict 



BOOX-COLLECTING. 1 1 

is so notable a person that we must pause for a 
moment to watch him eagerly at work upon his 
beautiful monastery, or else making his long jour- 
neys in quest of books for his rising library. He 
was a noble Saxon, a native of Northumbria, and a 
courtier of King Oswin, who had gifted his favourite 
with many a rood of land. He was forty-three 
years older than his young disciple Bede, having 
been born in 629. The passion for pilgrimages to 
the metropolis of the Catholic world had already 
begun to take hold of the Anglo-Saxon mind ; and 
kings and courtiers, monks and devotees, were wast- 
ing large portions of life on the difficult journey to 
Rome. But Benedict Biscop had other objects be- 
sides the kneeling at a shrine or the kissing of a 
relic ; he was an eager gatherer of literary treasures ; 
and during his journey to Borne he searched Italy 
and Graul with the keen eye of a devoted book-col- 
lector. At the Abbey of Lerins, in Provence, he 
assumed the tonsure, and was initiated into monastic 
discipline. On his safe return from his third pil- 
grimage to Rome, he visited his native Northum- 
bria; and then King Egfrid, impressed with great 
respect for the large bundle of manuscripts which 
formed the bulk of the wandering monk's packages, 
gave him broad lands at the mouth of the river 
Wear. So Benedict Biscop sat down to draw plans 
for his embryo monastery of Wearmouth, and rose 
up to dig its foundations. This was when Bede was 
a child of two years. But whence were to come the 
skilled workmen and the cunning artificers for the 
rearing and the adorning of such a pile? The poor 
Anglo-Saxon community, busied in defending their 
own and their masters' lives, when they were not 
attacking the lives and the lands of their neighbours, 
had then no leisure to study the spring of an arch 



12 England's first pictures. 

or the carving of a screen. And so Benedict Biscop 
had to set forth again for Gaul to hire artisans for 
his wondrous erection on the banks of the Wear. 
Soon the eyes of his Northumbrian countrymen 
opened wide at the novel sight of glass windows ; 
and after two other expeditions to Rome, the walls 
were seen glowing with pictures from the land of 
the South. Bede's descriptions of this home of his 
studious youth imply that the church must have 
been built after the Byzantine model, the type of 
which survives in the early basilicas of Rome. It is 
interesting to be able to discover, in these early days 
of Christian art, what was the character of those 
paintings which were brought into our island by the 
Abbot of Wearmouth. They were undoubtedly the 
first specimens introduced into England ; and it is 
Bede himself who has described them. The Virgin 
was certainly present, in company with the twelve 
Apostles ; but no mention is made of any semblance 
of adoration offered by the latter to the Romanist's 
Queen of Heaven. There were illustrations of the 
apocalyptic visions of St. John, and there was a 
series of deeply interesting designs in which the 
typical foreshadowings of the Old Testament were 
illuminated by the glorious dayspring of the New. 
For instance, Isaac was represented carrying the 
wood for his own altar of sacrifice; and in the same 
picture, Christ, the great Antitype, was seen bearing 
His cross. Again, Moses was given raising the 
brazen serpent in the wilderness before the eyes of 
the perishing people, and by his side the blessed 
Redeemer, elevated on the cross, as the one object 
of saving faith to a dying world. It is evident that 
Popery had not yet fully appropriated the tasteful 
services of Christian art for the promulgation of her 
own errors. 



THE SLAKE OF JARROW 13 

To such a scene and to such influences as these was 
the young Bede introduced. Benedict was much 
revered by his disciple, who remained under his 
teaching until his eighteenth year, when the first 
Abbot of Wearmouth died. But in addition to his 
princely foundation of Wearmouth, Benedict Biscop 
had built an affiliated house at Jarrow, or, as it is 
sometimes written, Yarrow, on the southern bank of 
the sister river Tyne ; and it was between these two 
religious establishments that the quiet tide of Bede's 
life was to flow, and then to ebb. Six miles east of 
Newcastle the Tyne expands into what is called the 
Slake of Jarrow. The ancient name was Grirwi or 
Gyrvy, the Saxon name for a fen ; and the people 
who dwelt there were Gyrvii, or " fen-men." But 
other remains testified to the existence of still earlier 
settlers. Roman pavements showed that the world's 
masters had lived even there amid the marshes of the 
Northumbrian river: the " pro salute" could be de- 
ciphered on an altar of the age of Hadrian; and 
another inscription proudly recorded that " the army 
erected this when Rome extended her dominion in 
Britain from the western to the eastern sea." The 
new edifice at Jarrow was dedicated to St. Paul, 
while the older house at Wearmouth bore the name 
of St. Peter, the consolidated institution being men- 
tioned in records as the " Monastery of St. Peter 
and St. Paul." In the distribution of treasures 
between the two, the younger house was endowed 
with the typical paintings mentioned before. About 
600 monks paced the cloisters, or studied on the 
benches of Benedict Biscop's library; their long 
black stuff gowns trailing on the stone pavements, 
and the great hood hunching their shoulders as they 
bent over the life of some saint, or the precious roll 
of some rare Greek author. They were called the 



14 SINGING-SCHOOL OF ENGLAND. 

a Black Monks of St. Benedict ; " and amongst the 
sombre group the young Bede was conspicuous for 
his earnest assiduity and his fervent, albeit but im- 
perfectly enlightened, piety. The heavy exactions 
of monastic service must have grievously broken in 
upon the course of study. The brotherhood rose at 
two in the morning for the u nocturnal ; " at six for 
the " matins; " at nine there was the " tierce ; " at 
twelve the "sexte; " at three in the afternoon the 
"none;" there were " vespers" at six in the 
evening ; and the " compline" at seven. Truly the 
fathers laid upon their children a burden heavy and 
grievous to be borne ; very different from that easy 
yoke and light burden of love-service which Christ 
lays upon the willing neck of His followers. 

Benedict Biscop had been so enamoured of the 
Roman choral service, that he had imported into 
England, in addition to parchments and pictures, no 
less mighty a person than John, Arch-Chanter 
(Archicantor) of St. Peter's, who was the means of 
superseding the Gallic, or Mozarabic, liturgy hitherto 
used in Britain, and of introducing the Boman liturgy 
in its stead. The Arch-Chanter was gifted with so 
rich a southern voice, and with such skill in its 
management, that soon the monastery on the bleak 
shore of Northumbria became the singing-school of 
all England. Multitudes were constantly flocking 
to hear John chant his Boman liturgy ; and often 
the wonderful boy of Wearmouth left the library for 
the choir, in order to take lessons in singing from 
the silver-tongued Italian. Benedict was succeeded 
in the Abbey by his friend and travelling companion 
Ceolfrid ; and under him Bede pursued his biblical 
and classic studies with the silent absorption of a 
devotee. At the age of nineteen the studious youth 
was admitted to deacon's orders, five years before 



bede's journeys. 15 

the usual time. He was ordained priest in his 
thirtieth year (702 or 703), and by this time his 
fame had flown abroad over the land. Nay, its 
echo had reached the seven hills of Rome ; and he 
who then sat thereon, Pope Sergius the First, wrote 
a letter to Abbot Ceolfrid, in which he requested to 
see the face of the young monk (for Bede was monk 
as well as priest), in order that they might confer 
together concerning some knotty points of Anglican 
discipline. But Bede never saw Rome. His pilgrim- 
ages were made to the Tyne instead of the Tiber; 
and when he travelled, it was from Wearmouth to 
Jarrow, and from Jarrow back again to Wearmouth, 
in order to confer with some scholarly brother con- 
cerning the reading of a manuscript or the interpre- 
tation of a phrase. He was probably excused from 
taking the longer journey by the death of the Pope 
during the course of the same year. But all this 
while the tonsured scholar was rearing a very pyra • 
mid of learning, based so broad and reaching so 
high that it is still seen with wonder as it rises out 
•of the darkness of that very early age. He was in 
training to become, as he has been well called, " the 
parent of theology in England " — England's early 
,u teacher of religion, literature, and science." He 
now began to write as well as read ; for the reading 
was a preparation for the writing, and he did not 
assay to dip the pen until he had swept the shelves 
of their cumbrous lore. The greater part of his 
voluminous works was written during the fifteen 
years which preceded the year 731. As he died in 
735, at the age of sixty-three, the great period for 
the reproduction of his vast erudition must have 
been between the forty-fourth and fifty-ninth years 
of his age. He himself says : " All my life I have 
spent in that same monastery, giving myself to the 



16 THE MONKS AT WORK. 

study of the Holy Scriptures ; and in the intervals 
between the hours of regular discipline, and the 
duties of singing in the chapel, I always took 
pleasure in learning, or teaching, or writing." 

^Numerous were the distractions in the course of 
his study, beside the constantly-revolving hours of 
choral service ; and yet these distractions must have 
proved really healthful relaxations to the scholar's 
severe tension of mind. For instance, it must have 
been a most salutary relief to go out with the rest 
of the cowled brotherhood to thresh and to winnow 
the corn for the three sorts of bread which were 
made in the " religious houses" of the times — the 
" monk's bread," " the esquire's bread," and the 
" boys' bread ;" this last economical division doubt- 
less retaining a good portion of the husk, to make 
bone for the stalwart framework of the rising Anglo- 
Saxon youth. Then there was milk to be given to 
the " house-lambs," and to the fatted calves of the 
stall ; there was work to be done in the garden of 
pot-herbs, in the great kitchen, and in the bakery. 
Bede says that the dignified Benedict Biscop him- 
self, my lord abbot as he was, delighted to join 
his subordinates when they were discharging these 
menial offices, and that he mightily enjoyed the 
exercise. There were even regulations on the statute- 
book for the good ordering of the dogs of the con- 
vent ; and the monks were enjoined " not to keep 
more swine than a man might govern;" a regulation 
which, if enforced, would seriously restrict the sup- 
ply of bacon for the refectory-table. The brother 
whose duty it was to drive a whole herd of hogs to 
the oak-woods, and to preside over their wilfulness 
during the day's acorn-eating, must of necessity 
possess a good " gift of rule." Bacon, it maybe 
here remarked by the way, was the chief food of the 



QUIET HEROISM. 17 

flourishing Anglo-Saxon monks. In the fall of the 
year the business of curing the hams and the flitches 
engrossed the energies of the brotherhood for a hard- 
working fortnight; and great was the display of 
stout arms, as with tucked-up sleeves the merry 
monks bent to their toil. 

And now, after these long years of most laborious 
preparation, Bede comes into view as the teacher of 
his own and of all succeeding times ; for there is not 
a student in this nineteenth century, who wishes to 
take a backward look into the early historic period 
of our island, that can dispense with the services of 
the monk who wrote the " Anglo-Saxon Ecclesiasti- 
cal History." But little more than seventy years 
had passed since Augustine had landed upon this 
wild and heathen island. The banks of Tyne and 
Wear were not visited by a Christian missionary 
until many years later still ; and yet in that remote 
and almost savage region, a native-born Saxon, who 
scarcely ever passed with sandalled foot beyond the 
door-step of his monastery, was reverently studying 
theology from its fountain-head, the Holy Scriptures, 
and was almost compassing the entire range of then- 
existing knowledge. His scientific treatises graduate 
the advance of intelligence up to his own period in 
all known directions ; he wrote history with the 
animation of a personal spectator, and as if he had 
" assisted" at the scene, as the French would say, 
while his command of the Latin language, in writing 
both prose and verse, was marvellous for its facility, 
if not for its classic elegance. It is certain that he 
not only possessed a remarkable knowledge of Greek, 
but that his scholarship embraced Hebrew also. 

There is surely a quiet heroism in the career of 
such a man, which fairly justifies his claim in the 
finding of posterity to the honoured title of u the 

B 



18 bebe's authorship. 

venerable." It is said that lie refused the dignity 
of abbot with its cumbrous honours, in order to carry 
out his calling as a teacher with the lip and with the 
pen. If, in a turbulent age, Bede's was a life of 
sheltered repose, it was at the same time one of 
intense intellectual toil. The courage of such a man 
was of a passive yet much-enduring kind ; and the 
spirit in which he laboured may be illustrated by the 
concluding paragraph of his greatest work : " And 
now I beseech Thee, Jesus ! that to whom Thou hast 
graciously granted sweetly to partake of the words of 
Thy wisdom and knowledge, Thou wilt also vouchsafe 
that he may some time or other come to Thee, the 
Fountain of all wisdom, and always appear before 
Thy face, who livest and reignest world without end. 
Amen ! Here ends, by God's help, the fifth book of 
the Ecclesiastical History of the English nation," 

It has been well written of Bede, that " he had 
the whole world of letters to unfold to his country- 
men ; he was the interpreter of the thoughts of ages 
to a race utterly unacquainted even with the names 
of the great men of pagan or of Christian antiquity." 
He wrote commentaries on Genesis, Samuel, Kings, 
the Proverbs, the Canticles ; he wrote glosses on 
Isaiah, Daniel, the twelve Prophets, Ezra, and 
Nehemiah ; he compiled commentaries on the Gos- 
pels, Epistles, and Acts, and a vast number of 
treatises and epistles on literary and scientific topics. 
He wrote the history of the Abbots of Wearmouth 
and Yarrow ; hymns ; epigrams in Latin verse ; and 
the books De Natitra Rerum and De Temporibus. 
The compilation from Isidore, and the Anglo-Saxon 
version of St. John, were Bede's last labours, and 
they were labours of love. He had completed his 
great work, the history, in the year 731. Excellent 
testimony is borne to the value of this book by the 



SEEING LIFE. 19 

telling fact that it has been so frequently translated 
into the vernacular tongue. And our great Alfred 
employed some of his own busy leisure by rendering 
it into the language of his Anglo-Saxons. 

In the year 733 or 734, Bede relieved the mo- 
notony of learned toil by a visit to York, where he 
spent some few days in the monastery, in the com- 
pany of his friend the Archbishop Egbert. This 
was probably the longest excursion he ever made ; 
his one great opportunity of surveying the world, 
and seeing life ! But when Egbert, towards the 
close of the year 734, again tried to allure him into 
a tour to " Eboracum," he pleaded broken health 
as an excuse : asthma was greatly distressing him ; 
"so that," says William of Malmesbury, "he drew 
his breath with pains and sighs." He was staying 
at this time at Jarrow. For the touching story of 
his last hours we are indebted to his loving scholar 
Cuthbert. He was proceeding with his rendering 
of St. John and some passages from Isidore into 
the home language of the Saxon people, when he 
was attacked by a shortness of breathing. This 
was at the beginning of April, 735. With wakeful 
nights, yet still laborious days, Bede lingered on 
until the 26 th of May, when it became evident to 
his circle of attached scholars that their master was 
to be taken from their head that day. Cuthbert 
records of the previous day that the venerable man 
" had passed the time cheerful and rejoicing, giving 
thanks to Almighty God, and singing psalms with 
uplifted hands." Once he sang the hymn, 

u O glorious King ! who, triumphing this day, 
Didst ascend above all heavens, 
Do not forsake us orphans ! 
But send down upon us the Spirit of Truth, 
Which was promised to us by the Father. 
Halleluiah ! " 



20 "write quickly/' 

And when lie came to that word, " Do not forsake 
us ! " he burst into tears and wept much. " By 
turns we read, and by turns we wept, — nay, we 
wept always while we read," says the sorrowing 
Cuthbert. He was often repeating the consoling 
words, " God scourgeth every son whom He re- 
ceiveth." And still he fervently laboured to com- 
plete the Anglo-Saxon St. John. Thus he dictated 
in a cheerful voice the whole of the day before he 
died — just pausing to say, " Go on quickly. I know 
not how long I shall hold out, and whether my 
Maker will not soon take me away." The sleepless 
night was spent in joyful thanksgivings. In the 
morning he begged his disciples to " write with all 
speed." This they did until nine o'clock, when they 
left him to perform some ceremonial service enjoined 
by the Romish ritual. This over, one of the scholars 
said to the dying Bede, " Most dear master, there is 
still one chapter wanting, and thou canst ill bear 
questioning." " It is no trouble. Take thy pen 
and write quickly," said Bede. 

Thus passed the day until evening ; the dying 
man distributing his small possessions, such as 
spices and other valuables of the times, as love- 
tokens to his friends, whispering these words the 
while, " I desire to depart and to be with Christ." 
At last the boy before mentioned interrupted him 
once more by saying, " Dear master, there is yet 
one sentence unwritten." " Write quickly ! " was 
the reply ; and he dictated the last words. " It is 
now done ! " exclaimed the lad. " Thou hast said 
right," replied the venerable master; "it is done ! 
Support my head with thy hands ; for I would fain 
sit where I am wont to pray, that resting there, I 
may call upon my Father." Thus supported on the 
floor of his little cell, he chanted the doxology, 




The Last Words of the Venerable Bede. ^ ^ % % 



taking sanctuary. 21 

" Gloria Patri et Filio et Spiritui Sancto." But the 
words " Spiritui Sancto " died softly on his lips, and 
the glad " amen " was reserved for the unbroken 
utterance of eternity. 

His remains were at first laid beneath the south 
porch of the church at Jarrow. But his fame, 
instead of languishing, waxed stronger with the lapse 
of ages. He was disinterred and placed in a more 
honourable position within the church ; and when 
the ninth century came, the world had agreed to 
call the scholarly monk of Jarrow and Wearmouth, 
" The Venerable Bede." The bones had rest beside 
the Tyne until about the middle of the tenth 
century, when Alfred, son of Weston, a priest of 
Durham, coveted the possession of the relics, and 
carried them off by stealth to enrich his own church 
beside the Wear. When the kindred relics of St. 
Cuthbert were removed in 1104, it was discovered 
that the bones of " The Venerable " had been placed 
in the same coffin. Fifty years later, the poor dust 
was again troubled by officious reverence, when 
Bishop Hugh Pudsey raised for its reception in the 
galilee of Durham Cathedral a shrine of gold and 
silver, glistening with jewels. This galilee was 
gifted with the privilege of sanctuary; and it is 
recorded that " certain men lay in two chambers 
over the north door, to answer the calls of those who 
fled hither ; that whenever any offenders came and 
knocked, they instantly let them in at any hour of 
the night, and ran quickly to the galilee bell and 
tolled it, that whosoever heard it might know that 
some one had taken sanctuary. " The bones of the 
Venerable had taken sanctuary in this retreat, silent 
except for the toll of the midnight bell, and the 
sudden patter of hurrying footsteps on its stone 
pavement But the bold age of demolition came at 



22 U THE CHAIR OF BEDE.' 

last, and sanctuary was sternly broken by men who 
had never crossed themselves before shrine, or bent 
the knee to mortal dust. So the dust of Bede was 
blown away by the draught of free air which swept 
in with the Reformers through the opened door of 
the galilee. But the stone on which the jewelled 
casket had rested is still preserved ; and an inscrip- 
tion in monkish Latin survives, which winds up with 
the well-known words : 

" Hac sunt in fossa. 
Bedse Venerabilis ossa." 

(" Here lie, beneath these stones, 
The Venerable Bede's bones.") 

Some fragmentary ruins of the old monastic edifice 
still survive at Jarrow ; and in the vestry of the 
church, which has risen again and again from its own 
ashes with marvellous vitality, is preserved a rude 
oaken seat, called by shrine-haunters and relic- 
worshippers, " the chair of Bede." 

We cannot claim for our Saxon monk the lofty 
position of a spiritual reformer. He did not at- 
tempt to check the pernicious growth of a haughty 
hierarchy; he climbed no hill-top of everlasting- 
truth in order to catch the first rays of a new day. 
But, close-barred within his narrow cell, he trimmed 
the midnight-lamp of patient study ; spread out 
every roll of manuscript learning which his out- 
stretched hand could reach ; and, enamoured of 
heavenly wisdom far more than of the wisdom of 
the world, he taught the Sacred Scriptures to his 
country, and transferred their spirit into his life. 
Yet all the while Bede was a very monk, — a monk 
of the dark ages, — revering the tonsure, enjoining 
celibacy on the clergy, and often taking the Romish 
side on questions in which the Anglican Church 
feebly sought to establish her independence of 



A CRESSET-LAMP IN MONKISII CELL. 



23 



Rome. He was " in all things too superstitious." 
But his piety was deep, humble, and experimental ; 
he was one of the most earnest, self-denying, and 
laborious students the world has ever known ; and, 
apportioning his life between the quiet activities 
of learning, teaching, and writing, he proved how 
bright and how beneficent may be the light of even 
a cresset-lamp in a monkish cell. 




SIGNAL-FIRES. 



When John Huss was asked at Constance, " if lie 
had really said he wished his soul might be in the 
same place as the soul of English Wycliff ? " his 
fearless " Yes " provoked the derisive laughter of 
the Council. The intrepid rector of Lutterworth 
had died thirty years before. But there are periods 
in the world's history in which the waiting echoes 
take up every word that is spoken for good, and 
carry it off to live for ever amongst the reverbe- 
rations of the distant hills. And there are winds 
that catch up every little scrap of paper on which 
the finding of a lost truth is recorded, and bear it 
direct to some prepared mind, countries or ages 
remote. Thus the spoken protests and the written 
thoughts of our own Wycliff penetrated the Bohe- 
mian forests, and wound their way into the cells of 
the University of Prague. In one of those cells a 
young scholar was sighing for undiscovered truth, 
and longing for some one to cut a path through 
the tangled forest of errors that lay around. The 
works of Wycliff reached him at the right moment, 
struck at the root of this false growth, and, clear- 
ing a way through the thickets, showed to the young 
aspirant a free prospect beyond. 



THE POOR-SCHOLAR'S PURSE. 25 

John Huss was born on the 6th of July, 1369, 
at the village of Hussinetz, which clings to a green 
slope above the river Flanitz, in the hill-country of 
Bohemia. He was peasant-born, trained to labour, 
and inured to hardship. This nurture developed 
well the muscular part of his fine manly character. 
He was a brave Bohemian peasant-lad of sixteen 
when the worthy proprietor of his native village 
set his eyes upon him, and, discerning the true 
rudiments of greatness, proposed that he should 
be sent for development to the University of their 
own beloved Prague. The boy's eyes glistened ; 
but the peasant-father ruefully shook his head. 
No, the boy was born to the stern inheritance 
of toil. Whereupon the great man of the land 
talked with other great men, and said, "'Twas 
pity that young John of Hussinetz should dig all 
his days for want of a poor-scholar's purse." So the 
purse was provided, and John was sent to Prague. 

In a grand basin, scooped out of the hills, and 
cut in twain by the river Moldau, stood the capital 
of Bohemia. Already the Neustadt enclosed the 
Alstadt, the new town enshrined the old, on the 
right bank of the river ; but on either side narrow 
streets of tall quaint houses rose towards the hills, 
tier beyond tier. The University had been newly 
founded, and was exciting great attention. For 
about three hundred years there had existed a regu- 
lar school at Prague, which seems to have formed 
the nucleus of this the first Slavic university. The 
University was the work of King Charles I. of 
Bohemia, the Emperor Charles IV. of Germany, 
for crown and diadem met on the same brows. This 
was the culminating point of Bohemian greatness. 
The emperor looked upon Prague as the best jewel 
in his circlet ; and when he issued his " golden 



26 SLAVIC LITERATURE. 

bull," he therein exhorted all sons of the imperial 
electors by all means to learn Bohemian. But even 
when this Slavic tongue was mastered, its literature 
was little worth. A rhymed chronicle or two ; a 
weighty allegory, counting nine thousand verses, 
and called " Tristram ; " " The Nine Joys of Mary ; " 
and " The Five Sources of Sin," — such, with a 
cloud of legends and satires, formed the Slavic lite- 
rature which the young electors were to study. 

The Germans flocked to Prague, and brought 
with them a strong type of Church orthodoxy. But, 
for some reason or other, a clearer atmosphere al- 
ways prevailed within this amphitheatre of hills ; 
and Stanislaus Znaim, the master under whom the 
boy of Hussinetz entered himself as pupil, consorted 
with the liberal party. Eleven years passed, and the 
peasant-boy of sixteen had grown into the learned 
scholar of twenty- seven. Then came his degree of 
Master, and two years later he was lecturing to some 
purpose in the University. By this time there was 
a Christian earnestness in his manner which evinced 
the deep piety that already had possession of his 
heart. The man who now sat upon the throne of 
Bohemia was Wenceslaus, the son of the Emperor 
Charles IV. He had begun to reign with a fair 
promise at fifteen years of age. But power poisoned 
his unsteady nature, and his character became al- 
most intolerable to his people. And now comes 
into view one of those golden bands of Providence 
which bind all the scattered pages of history into 
one beautiful volume. Our own degenerate King 
Richard II. had sought in marriage the Bohemian 
Princess Anne, sister of this disreputable Wences- 
laus; an unpromising link, one would have said, 
either for England or for Bohemia. But Anne was 
of another nature than her royal brother; and before 



FROM OXFORD TO PRAGUE. 27 

long she won in England the pleasant name of "the 
good Queen Anne." There may have been fair 
reason for the gift of her name, for we know that in 
a dark age she was in the habit of seeking light 
from the Holy Scriptures. Wycliff mentions that 
she had brought with her to her adopted home a 
manuscript of the Gospels in the Latin, German, 
and Bohemian languages. The English reformer's 
mind was still pervading society, either provoking 
hatred to his tenets, or infusing the love of truth 
and opposition to established error. Queen Anne 
on the throne, England became an object of interest 
to Bohemia; and a young Bohemian nobleman, who 
had completed his curriculum at Prague, set forth 
for Oxford.* There he heard of the novelties which 
had made WyclifPs name famous throughout the 
land : he heard how he had boldly given the Bible 
into the hands of an untaught people ; how he had 
inveighed against the encroachments of the Romish 
hierarchy ; how he had appealed from Pope, priest, 
and council to the Word of God; and how, when 
cited before a council at Lambeth by order of the 
outraged Gregory XL, he had so nobly vindicated 
the nineteen propositions which the Pope had con- 
demned, that he had been suffered to depart in 
safety, to continue to make his pulpit a chair of 
enlightened theology, and then to lie down and die 
in peace on his own pillow at Lutterworth. This 
was a thrilling story for the young nobleman to tell 
on his return; but he did more than charm his 
fellow-collegians with a tale more exciting than even 
that of their doughty Tristram of the 9000 verses ; 

* Nicholas von Faulfisch; but there is some confusion respecting 
this name. Several writers have supposed that Jerome of Prague 
belonged to this noble Bohemian house, and have represented him to 
be the young nobleman referred to. But Neander refutes this 
assertion. 



28 THE BOHEMIAN KNIGHT-ERRANT. 

for he had drunk deep into the sentiments of the 
British reformer ; and still more, he had brought 
back with him a large number of his writings. One 
day he went up to John Huss and spread those writ 
ings before him. John closed his door and sat down 
to read. He lived long with those books ; he lived 
in them ; and when he came out from his cell, it 
was to declaim against the infallibility of the Pope, 
against auricular confession, and against the great 
" standing army" of monks whose intellectual pros- 
tration was as complete as their moral corruption. 

John Huss, " Master of the liberal Arts," and 
" Professor of Theology*' at the University of 
Prague, was now a man of deep personal piety, who 
communed with his own soul and earnestly sought 
after God. His was not a conviction of the head ; 
it was a conversion of the heart. Such a true and 
living man as Huss could not long dwell alone; such 
a vivifying influence was sure to spread. A little 
knot of like-minded friends gathered about him ; a 
little circle of admiring and sympathising disciples 
hemmed him round. Amongst the latter was a 
fiery young knight of Bohemia, whose name as 
scholar was widely known as Hieronymus Pragensis, 
whose name as martyr is beloved by the English 
Church as " Jerome of Prague." He was younger 
by several years than John Huss, and was his supe- 
rior in intellectual power, in general cultivation, in 
a vehement energy of spirit, and in a gift of elo- 
quence which was torrent-like when once it had 
broken forth and had found a rocky channel for its 
flow. His voice was of that rare kind which is per- 
fectly musical in its notes, and which has the power 
of expanding in volume and of varying its key in 
perfect adaptation to its subject. His ardour was of 
too fiery a nature to permit him to remain long in 



WYCLIFF HAS OPENED THE SHELL; 29 

one place. Now he was eagerly reading at Oxford, 
then he was at Paris ; we search for him again, and 
he is at Jerusalem ; next he is wandering in Hun- 
gary ; again he is reposing for a moment in Vienna ; 
no longer at Vienna, he must be looked for in Rus- 
sia ; presently he is at Cologne, the queen of the 
Rhine cities, or at Heidelberg, that beautiful uni- 
versity-city of the Neckar. Wherever he went, men 
stared at the young scholar-knight with alarm and 
awakened prejudice, but nevertheless stopped to 
listen to a speech that bore everything before it. 
Sometimes he said very strange things indeed ; for 
at Oxford the Chevalier Jerome had learnt what he 
could never forget. He, too, had brought bask with 
him some writings of our English Wycliff which had 
not previously penetrated into the old city of the 
Moldau. He came back exclaiming, " Until now 
we had nothing but the shell of knowledge ; Wycliff 
was the first to lay open the kernel." 

The young Jerome eagerly joined the group of 
students who were gathered round John Huss. 
Huss was calm, sustained, the creature of no sudden 
impulse, but the strong embodiment of principle. 
It was not his taste to be in the front of contending 
parties; much rather would he have lived in the 
sober exercise of the Christian graces, and- in 
deep communion with his God. But conviction was 
with him action ; as he believed, so must he live ; 
and if he once planted his foot advisedly on a 
given road, that road would he follow until it 
ended in eternity. But when his calm eye met 
the gaze of his young disciple, and when he caught 
the sound of his protesting voice, the soul of 
the elder went out to meet the soul of the younger, 
and a bond was forged between them which was 
but strengthened in the after-fires of persecution. 



30 THE " HOUSE OF BREAD." 

The two men, so differing yet so alike — so differing 
in native character, so alike in conviction, opinion, 
purpose, and fate, — made together one great power 
which wrought marvellously on their own and the 
after age. The man of sober principle was stimu- 
lated by the youth of generous impulse, and the 
youth of reckless ardour was chastened by the man 
of profound experience; so the beautiful compen- 
sation was complete. Thus one supplied what the 
other lacked ; and still they held hands for mutual 
encouragement in enterprise, for mutual support 
in trial ; and so closely were they linked together, 
that when we talk of the attempted Reformation of the 
15th century, we speak in the same breath of " John 
Huss and Jerome of Prague." 

In the year 1401 Huss was appointed preacher in 
the Bethlehem Church in Prague. The Bethlehem 
had been founded ten years before by two pious lay- 
men, a member of the Council Royal of Bohemia 
and a merchant. These good souls had been im- 
pressed with that lack of preaching the Gospel to 
the poor and ignorant which an indolent priest- 
hood and a Latin service entirely failed to supply. 
So the merchant gave the house, and the councillor 
found a preacher who would speak to the people in 
their own tongue wherein they were born. The 
curious old title-deed of the foundation, which is 
still in existence, states that " Christ had given com- 
mission to His disciples to preach the word, so as 
to preserve constantly in the world the living me- 
mory of Himself. Therefore the founders endowed 
a chapel consecrated to the Innocents, and named 
' Bethlehem/ or the ' House of Bread,' for use of 
the common people, that they might be refreshed 
with the bread of holy preaching." And John 
Huss was appointed to minister in this " house of 



"a miracle! a miracle!" 31 

bread" to the hungry Bohemians. His sermons 
were full of love and of gentle sympathy with the 
condition of his hearers. But when he had to set 
forth the mode of cure, he lifted up his voice un- 
falteringly against a system which merely presented 
a revolving circle of outward ceremonial. Then he 
denounced the prevailing immoralities of the age, 
and the evils of superstition; showing in beautiful 
contrast the religion of Jesus, which has its temple 
in the heart of believers. So long as he mainly 
attacked the sins of the laity, John Huss was al- 
lowed freedom of speech. Besides, he was in favour 
at court as confessor to Queen Sophia; whilst at 
the University his reputation was so high, that stu- 
dents flocked from all parts of Germany to listen to 
the teachings of the Professor of Theology. It is 
declared that at one time there were no fewer than 
44,000 students residing in Prague. Zbynek, the 
new Archbishop of Prague, was young, and a man 
of strong secular tastes — one who liked to keep a 
good charger in his stall, and, vaulting into his 
saddle, was ready at any critical moment to prick 
forth to battle. But he wished to have no glaring 
scandals in his diocese; and when he seated him- 
self on his archiepiscopal throne in 1403, he sent 
for John Huss, and took counsel with him about the 
prevailing abuses of the day. Especially they had 
to discuss an abuse which had sprung out of a 
certain superstition at Wilsnack. An abandoned 
knight had wilfully destroyed a church long time 
ago. But some of the altar-stones had held toge- 
ther, and now, in a crevice of the ruined shrine, 
were discovered three blood-red wafers. " A mira- 
cle ! a miracle ! " was the cry. The northern 
world of devotees flocked to the spot. Pilgrims 
came trooping from far Denmark, from the pine- 



32 MIRACLE-WOKKING DENOUNCED. 

forests of Norway, and from Sweden, Hungary, 
and Poland. Legends of miraculous cures worked 
at the outraged shrine of Wilsnack travelled from 
land to land; and of course the usual growth of 
monkish devices sprang up around the spot. It 
has been remarked that a natural solution might 
readily be found for the actual existence of the won- 
der; and that Professor Ehrenberg's recent ob- 
servations on the microscopic Monas prodigiosa 
would supply a key to the difficulty. Bread and 
kindred substances, when long exposed to a damp 
atmosphere, become coated with an animal growth 
which, though resolvable under the microscope, puts 
on the aspect of blood to the naked eye. It is not 
probable that either Archbishop Zbynek or Master 
Huss had a second-sight view of Professor Ehren- 
berg and his wondrous detective instrument; but 
Archbishop Zbynek was thoroughly ashamed of the 
glaring scandals which had ripened around the 
deserted fane. A grave committee of three Mas- 
ters, one of whom was our Huss^ went forth to take 
evidence on the spot; and they brought back such 
formidable stories of badly-disposed pilgrims and 
spurious miracles, that the young archbishop arose 
in great wrath, banished all pilgrims, and forbade 
all future pilgrimages to his diocese. Then, feel- 
ing his tongue loosed by his ecclesiastical superior 
himself, John Huss lifted up his voice, denounced 
the blind miracle-hunting and the profane miracle- 
working of the age, and sent forth a very remark- 
able pamphlet against this great superstition. 

Huss was not fully emancipated from many of the 
grave errors of his Church. Intellectual illumina- 
tion does not come in a day ; it sometimes takes 
ages to evolve a truth, ages to discover a law in 
science. But already the Spirit of God was working 



THE ARCHBISHOP STARTLED. 33 

his new creation in many a lonely member of a 
hidden Church ; and when, in the next great cen- 
tury, the word was divinely spoken, " Let there be 
light," then " light was ! " 

" Christ is now hidden from sight; present only 
to faith," writes John Huss out of the thick dark- 
ness of his time ; " but truly, if the priests faithfully 
followed his evangelical counsel, and preached Christ's 
words to the people, instead of lying wonders, our 
gracious Saviour would guide both priests and people 
out of the bad way — the way of sin and falsehood." 
The young archbishop was startled. Huss was going 
beyond the short tether allowed him. He had 
intended to keep the tame " goose" (Huss signifies 
" goose" in Bohemian) in the yard of his archiepis- 
copal palace ; but it proved to be wild in nature, 
making its free-born cries heard upon the winds of 
the world : its erratic wings must be clipped. It 
was the habit of the day to symbolise men's names ; 
and even grave schoolmen allowed something very 
like a pun to escape their parchment lips. It was 
evident that Master Huss had been reading his Bible ; 
moreover, that he had been studying Augustin; worse 
still, Wycliff. Yes ; a strict eye must be kept on 
Master Huss. "Wy cliff's writings move me," Huss 
himself confesses ; " the love moves me which he 
had to the law of Christ, maintaining its truth that 
cannot fail in one jot or tittle/' Young students 
were still journeying to Oxford, and returning 
deeply infected with that spirit of theological in- 
quiry which had lifted the land with earthquake 
power, but which was subsiding into the enforced 
quietude of another century, until should come the 
hour of the great upheaval under our eighth Henry. 
There was at this time a remarkable amount of in- 
tercourse between the two seats of learning — the one 



34 BOHEMIAN NATIONALITY. 

on the Isis, the other on the Moldau. A story has 
survived which, whether true or legendary, is illus- 
trative of the kind of influence which reached the 
Bohemian capital from our own country. Two Eng- 
lishmen had hired a room in Prague, and by way of 
leaving some memorial behind them, they drew a 
picture on the wall representing the great " Anti- 
thesis of Christ and Antichrist." One compartment 
gave the entrance of the meek and lowly Redeemer 
into Jerusalem ; the other, a pope's ostentatious and 
pretentious procession as he enters the holy city of the 
Western Church. Great commotions ensued on the 
discovery of this, probably very indifferent, work of 
English art. But the time was now drawing on when 
the great antithesis was to be worked out by sterner 
weapons than the pencils of the young English 
travellers. The archbishop was beginning to arouse 
himself in earnest. He had but small hold on the 
students in the University, who, with very scant 
reverence, called him the " Alphabetarius," or "A, 
B, C doctor." He had a more skilled hand for the 
holding of a bridle than a pen ; he was a better judge 
of a horse than of a thesis. But nevertheless Arch- 
bishop Zbynek prepared forty-five propositions, pro- 
fessed to be taken from the works of the English 
heresiarch, and spread them with great formality 
before a meeting of the University and the cathedral 
chapter. It is strange that Wycliff s battle should 
be fought here in the depths of Germany, years after 
the lists had closed in his own England, and when 
God had granted him a smooth death-pillow at 
Lutterworth some twenty years before. 

And now commenced that singular national 
struggle within the walls of the University, which 
ended in the victory of the Bohemian party, but 
which also issued in the decline of this celebrated 



' 



THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 35 

academy. The whole of Germany had hitherto held 
three out of the four suffrages which ruled in all 
matters determined by vote, leaving only one to 
Bohemia itself. Huss was at the head of the Bohe- 
mian party, because he held it to be the side of 
freedom — the side opposed to the influence of Rome. 
Now nothing so powerfully clenched the hold which 
he had obtained over the hearts of his countrymen 
as his intense love of country. His nationality was 
a passion. He preached to the Bohemians in their 
own Slavic tongue ; he circulated literary fragments 
in the language of the people ; aided by Jerome, he 
wrote for them beautiful hymns which turned into 
melody the workings of their fervent spirits, the 
lowly pleadings of prayer, the lofty uprisings of 
praise. He was the man of the people, the master 
who held the key of their hearts. And now it became 
evident that Bohemian nationality was ready in the 
main to defend the forty-five propositions of Wy cliff ; 
while the German influence was fiercely invoked on 
the antagonistic side. So Huss and his Bohemians 
wore the colours of the Englishman ; and all Ger- 
many, in its nations, bore the old time-stained 
honours of the Pope. But of course the preponde- 
rance of German votes carried the day ; the condem- 
nation of the forty-five articles was secured, to the 
intense chagrin of Prague ; and the archbishop, 
gathering up 200 precious manuscripts of WyclifFs 
writings, made a great fire in his palace, and with 
great glee burnt them all. But John Huss was not 
the man to be silenced by the vivid eloquence of 
these tongues of flame, albeit they uttered very 
warning denunciations. He instantly set to work 
afresh, translated many of the condemned writings 
into the heart-language of the Slavic race, and at the 
same time issued the first translation of the whole 



36 THE ACADEMIC FEUD. 

Bible amongst the people. Then the archbishop, 
hot from his great fire, interdicted him from preach- 
ing in Bohemian to the hungry people in the " House 
of Bread;" and Huss preached on, to vast crowds. 
Neither was Huss subdued by the triumph of the 
German party in the University ; for he never rested 
until he obtained from King Wenceslaus an altera- 
tion in the constitution of the University, giving 
three votes to the Bohemians, and one to the Ger- 
mans. The effect was prodigious : German teachers 
and scholars, professors and graduates, arose in deep 
umbrage, and quitted Prague for ever. It was a 
great Hegira of learning. This was in the year 
1409. The emigrants settled at Erfurt, at Heidel- 
berg, at Cracow ; and three new foundations sprang 
up at Leipsig, Ingoldstadt, Bostock. 

It has not been without an object that this old 
academic feud has been recorded : it was not a mere 
faction fight of passing interests ; no squabble of 
cap and gown ; it was great in its results far beyond 
the mighty ire of an outvoted professor. Those 
who numbered the learned emigrants at the highest 
count them at near 40,000, while only 2,000 students 
were left in Prague ; and wherever they went they 
were unconscious propagandists of the great reform- 
ing doctrines of Wycliff, though it was generally in 
the spirit of dissent or the eager zest of disputation. 
Enough : truth was on the winds. The seed-pod 
had burst in that grand old amphitheatre of houses 
and hills beside the Moldau, and the breezes of a 
whole continent had taken up the precious germs and 
carried them off to fitting soils, where they would 
bring forth fruit in their season. The careless 
observers call these things chances ; the thoughtful 
call them providences, Let us recapitulate for a 
moment — it will not take long. A young courtier, 



THE LINKS IN THE CHAIN. 37 

in the suite of a royal bride, travels from Prague to 
Oxford, hears strange novelties, and brings home 
very novel books. He shows his outlandish books 
on his return to an anxious student, who has been 
vaguely asking, "What is truth?" The student 
folds his new treasure to his heart, closer than he 
has ever pressed the shirt of hair or the sharp-edged 
crucifix to his bosom ; the books are snatched from 
him and burnt; but an academic feud springs up, 
and away marches the worsted party, talking scorn 
of the new books and the new heresies, yet never- 
theless teaching the very watchwords of reform to 
the busy echoes of the land. A section of the angry 
professors and students settles at Erfurt ; a learned 
theologian at Erfurt, John of Wesel by name, takes 
the subtle infection of heresy, and at last there 
comes to Erfurt a young Augustine monk, the son 
of a poor Saxon miner, who reads for his doctor's 
degree in the tainted works of this same John of 
Wesel ! Every link in the chain had held firm ; 
effect followed cause in beautiful sequence. 

In the first flush of national triumph, John Huss 
was appointed rector of his University. But soon 
came a revulsion of feeling. Prague was starving 
under its victory. The merchants grumbled on the 
quiet quays ; the lodging-keepers sighed over their 
empty chambers ; and truly the sudden defection of 
some 40,000 growing students and capacious pro- 
fessors caused a serious falling off in the demand 
for the beer, the bread, and the sausages. 

" It is Master Huss that hath brought the mis- 
chief," murmured one. "It is that fire-breathing 
Chevalier Jerome," said another. " It all comes of 
religious schism," gloomily remarked a third. 

The papal world was about this time scandalised 
and bewildered by the pretensions of two rival Popes. 



38 WHICH OF THE THREE IS POPE? 

To whom should all spiritual subservience, yes, and 
temporal homage, be rendered? To a Gregory 
XII., or to a Benedict XIII. ? Or, with the great 
majority of the cardinals at the Council of Pisa, 
should both the pretenders be pronounced spurious, 
and an Alexander V. be mounted on the pinnacle 
of the Church? The puzzled laity went about 
begging for pity's sake to be told which of the three 
heads that seemed to have the nimbus around their 
brows was in truth Christ's vicar and vicegerent 
upon earth. King Wenceslaus sided with whichever 
party in the Church were most likely to aid him 
in his attempts to secure for himself the imperial 
diadem ; while his private inclination led him to 
protect John Huss, as an excellent engine of war to 
be worked against the hierarchy at any moment of 
need. In the year 1410, Alexander V. had already 
dropped from his lofty pedestal, because touched by 
the resistless hand of death ; but John XXIII. had 
eagerly mounted to his place. In the mean time 
the voice of Huss was growing both clearer and 
louder ; clearer in its appeal to the Scriptures as 
the one ultimate standard of right and wrong, 
louder in its denunciations of a hierarchy which 
tyrannised over the souls of men. But events were 
now hurrying on with rapid pace. Archbishop 
Zbynek, whose enmity against Huss now amounted 
to hatred, appealed fiercely against him at the court 
of Pope John XXIII. , and sustained his arguments 
with the tangible eloquence of costly rings and 
vases, and even some of the fine horses from his 
well-filled stables. John Huss appealed also ; but 
the answer came in the form of a citation to appear 
at Bologna, where the Pope was then holding his 
very disreputable court. Huss, encouraged by the 
king, the queen, and his own personal friends, de* 



EXCOMMUNICATION AND INTERDICT. 39 

clined to appear; and in February 1411, sentence 
of excommunication, u in contumaciam" was pro- 
nounced against him. Yet still he stood firm ; and 
therefore Prague, as the city where he maintained 
his position, was laid under interdict. But the King 
Wenceslaus was by this time in the full spirit of 
the conflict ; and he set at naught ban and interdict, 
citation and curse. Little cared he for truth and 
righteousness ; still it was congenial to have a good 
cause against that Church which had failed to aid 
him in his efforts to secure for his own brows the 
broad diadem of empire. The frustrated archbishop 
rode away to practise against Huss on the mind of 
Sigismund, brother of Bohemian Wenceslaus. But 
a swifter steed than his own overtook him on the 
road — it was the pale charger whose rider is death. 

The Pope had just been publishing a bull, throw- 
ing King Ladislaus of Naples under the curse of the 
ban, because he had adhered to one of the late rival 
popes, Gregory XII. In the thunder-language of 
the Vatican a crusade was proclaimed against him, 
and full pardon of their sins was granted to all of 
both sexes who should take part in the holy war. 
Nay; if through stress of circumstances the faithful 
could not render themselves in person at the camp, 
why, then the money would do instead ; as much 
money, that is to say, as they would have spent had 
they come forward, horse and man, to the good help 
of holy Church. And then "I bestow on thee" 
(these were the very words of the bull) " the most 
perfect forgiveness of all thy sins, both from the guilt 
and from the punishment thereof, in the name," &c, 
the most solemn of all names ! A papal legate came 
to Prague, bringing the bull for publication, together 
with the pallium of the new archbishop ; a costly 
endowment — for everything had its price under 



40 THE YOUNG ARTISANS. 

John XXIII. Huss was required to publish the 
bull, and some of his oldest friends entreated him 
to render obedience. Amongst these was his re-? 
vered old master, Stanislaus Znaim, who first 
adopted him in the University when he came thither 
as the poor young peasant-lad of Hussinetz. " So 
far as the papal mandates agree with apostolical 
mandates, so far will I obey them most willingly," 
said Huss ; " but if I see in them anything at 
variance with these, I shall not obey, even though 
the stake were staring me in the face." His friends 
folded their hands, shook their heads, and left him. 
Mournfully did Huss afterwards record the testing 
hour which divided him from his beloved old asso- 
ciates. " The sale of indulgences, and the lifting 
of the standard of the cross against Christians, first 
cut me off from my old friends." 

A sorrowful scene, which greatly tended to pre- 
cipitate matters, now took place at Prague. Some 
priests were proclaiming the bull, and inviting the 
people to purchase indulgences, when three poor 
young artisans, by name Martin, John, and Stasek, 
stepped forth and said, bluntly enough : " Nay, 
thou liest ! Master Huss has taught us better than 
that. We know it is all false." The three young 
men, who had at least truth if not good breeding on 
their side, were seized, carried to the council- 
chamber, condemned to death. Huss placed himself 
at the head of 2000 students, and repaired to the 
council-house, demanding a hearing. " The fault 
of these youths is my own," said the brave man ; 
u I therefore, much more than they, deserve to die." 
" Calm the people, calm the people, good Master 
Huss ; and no blood shall be shed." With this 
assurance Huss and his volunteers marched back to 
their halls and chambers. But scarce had the 



THE " GROUND-SWELL." 41 

crowd subsided than Martin, John, and Stasek were 
led forth to execution. Instantly the multitude ran 
together again in horror ; but nothing could now be 
done. A great escort of armed soldiers surrounded 
the lads ; and when the excitement of the populace 
became inconvenient, the -procession was ordered to 
halt, short of the destined place, and the three 
young heads were struck off in a hurry. " Let him 
who does the like suffer the same fate ! " cried the 
headsman. " We are all ready to do the like; all 
ready to suffer the same ! " surged up like the sudden 
roar of a " ground-swell " from the heaving sea of 
faces around. In that murmur was represented the 
profound and wide-spread popular emotion which 
would ere long break out into the vast gatherings 
on Mount Tabor, in the formation of the two great 
parties of the Calixtines and the Taborites, in the 
valour but ferocity of a Ziska, the leadership of a 
Procopius, and the long struggle for faith and 
fatherland. If we turn over the pages of Bohemian 
history, and look again two centuries later, we see 
that the popular sentiment had not yet subsided ; 
for we come upon that sad episode, when Protestant 
Frederic, Elector Palatine, journeyed with his proud 
English Elizabeth, at the bidding of still Protestant 
Bohemia, to take up his brief residence as king in 
Prague. Another interesting historic evidence of the 
durability of the popular feeling in Bohemia yet exists 
in that peaceful community of settlers in various 
parts of the world, to which the Churches of the nine- 
teenth century yield a willing respect under the name 
of the Bohemian, Moravian, or United Brethren. 

But to return from this onward view down the 
dark vista of centuries to the excited multitude in 
Prague. Presently a party of students came and 
carried the martyred John, Martin, and Stasek to 



42 €t l APPEAL." 

tneir own Bethlehem chapel; and Huss himself 
declared that the three youths might justly be called 
martyrs for Christian truth, like others whose 
memory is fragrant in the Christian Church. And 
now came another sentence of excommunication 
against John Huss, thundering from the seven hills 
of Home, and reverberating over the Alps and 
amongst the hills and forests of Bohemia. It was 
put forth with the most terrible formulas. If Master 
John persisted twenty days longer in his disobedience 
to the holy father (the monster, John XXIII. , be it 
remembered), the ban was to be proclaimed in all 
churches with ringing of bells and extinguishing of 
tapers. Every place that housed him, every man 
that bore him company, should lie under the same 
curse; Master John's person must be seized, con- 
demned, and burnt, according to law ; and Bethle- 
hem chapel must, by all means, be rased to its 
foundations, that no more heretics might nestle 
there. So ran the bull of excommunication. " I 
appeal," said Huss, when he heard the thunder, — 
"I appeal from the Roman court to the most just 
Judge and High-Priest over all." But King 
Wenceslaus was frightened, and entreated Huss for 
the sake of peace to leave Prague for a while. And 
so, at the close of the year 1412, John Huss meekly 
laid down his office, and retired first to one friend's 
castle in the country, and then to another. But, 
like Luther in the Wartburg, it was labour and not 
repose that he sought; and his remarkable work, 
IJe Ecclesia, was the fruit of his visit to the fortress 
of the lords of Austie. From time to time he moved 
about, shifting his quarters : now he was at his own 
native village of Hussinetz; now enjoying the 
knightly hospitality of Henry of Lazan, who 
beckoned him into the stronghold of his castle 



COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE. 43 

of Cracowec. But he was perpetually descend- 
ing from his places of refuge to preach in the open 
fields to vast multitudes of people who came to 
hear him. 

And now the time for the assembling of the na- 
tional council at Constance was near at hand. Such 
crying scandals, such intolerable abuses of spiritual 
power, had been at work in the very daylight, that 
the stifled murmur on the lips of princes and peo- 
ples had at length broken out into a loud call for 
" Eeform." " The Church must be reformed in its 
head and in its members," was the language of 
learned Universities; and foremost amongst these 
was the University of Paris, with its illustrious Chan- 
cellor Gerson at its head. " Give us the communion 
in both kinds ; give the cup to the laity ;" was the 
plea of several European countries. The voices were 
so loud and so strong that Rome could no longer 
affect deafness ; and the city of Constance was fixed 
on as the spot where should sit that great represen- 
tative parliament of nations. On the fair lake of 
Constance, just where a narrow strait connects its 
waters with the beautiful Untersee, which is in fact 
its southern arm, stands the old city of the council. 
It was the year 1414, when met this most imposing 
of spiritual conclaves. Numerous cardinals, arch- 
bishops, prelates, 1800 doctors of divinity and priests 
represented the Church. The Emperor Sigismund, 
with a following of a thousand persons ; the Elector 
Palatine, the Elector of Saxony, Austrian dukes, the 
Duke of Bavaria, the Burgrave Frederic of Nurem- 
berg, with ambassadors from the whole community 
of Christian nations, — these were the lay elements 
of this great assembly. The Kauf-haus, or Mer- 
chants' Hall, supplied the chamber in which sat the 
council. The old Gothic minster was the church to 



44 THE SAFE-CONDUCT. 

which they resorted in pompous devotion : the church 
of St. Stephen, more ancient still; the Franciscan 
Convent, the Dominican Monastery, the old Town 
Hall, — all took their part in the scenery of this 
memorable solemnity ; and beyond the gentle shores 
that rimmed the lake rose Alpine ramparts and Tyro- 
lean heights. For four years did that great committee 
of powers, spiritual and temporal, sit within that broad 
circle of vine-clad hills and of distant silvery moun- 
tains, professing to be breathlessly at work upon the 
regeneration of the Church, sweeping away three 
Popes with a high hand, talking whole folios of 
subtle wisdom or childish folly, prescribing empirical 
cures for incurable disease, and suddenly breaking 
up in helpless amazement, because the new Pope of 
their own adoption, Martin V., as soon as he had 
mounted his mule, with an emperor at one rein and 
an elector at another, laughed at their superstitious 
power, and told them with infinite glee that " the 
council was over and done." But this is a rapid 
summary ; return we to the opening year, the year 
of high hopes, 1414. 

Kaiser Sigismund wrote to his brother, King 
Wenceslaus of Bohemia, recommending him to send 
the perplexing Master Huss to the council ; (i and 
I," said Sigismund, " give him a safe-conduct." 
The instrument by which Sigismund engaged to take 
him under the protection of empire and emperor 
declares expressly that Huss shall be permitted u to 
pass to Constance, to remain there, and to return free." 
To Huss himself he communicated a separate promise 
that he would secure a hearing for him before the 
council, and that, should he decline to submit himself 
to its decision, he would send him home unharmed 
to his own Bohemia. Nothing could look fairer. 
Huss in reply writes to the emperor, " I will humbly 



FROM PRAGUE TO CONSTANCE. 45 

trust my life on it; and under your safe-conduct 
will, by permission of the Highest, appear at Con- 
stance ; and I hope I shall not be afraid to confess 
the Lord Christ." Thanking his Kaiser for his 
promise, he further says, " which your majesty will 
perform to the honour of the King of kings." But , 
though Huss himself trusted so unhesitatingly to his 
emperor's pledged word, several warning whispers 
were breathed into his ear. A friendly knight said 
to him, " Be sure thou wilt be condemned, Master 
John." A poor Polish tailor called Andrew, in his 
leave-taking, broke out with these words, which rang 
in the ear of Huss in the midst of his after-sorrows 
at Constance: " God be with thee, dearest Master 
John, most steadfast in the truth ! for hardly think 
I thou wilt get back unharmed. Not the King of 
Hungary, but the King of Heaven reward thee with 
all good for the true teaching I have had from thee." 
And then John Huss addressed a farewell pastoral 
to his congregation, touchingly alluding to the perils 
he was about to encounter, and commending them 
to the love of God. 

On the 11th of October, 1414, he left Prague with 
the two knights who were commissioned to protect 
him from all hurt, one of whom was his noble- 
hearted friend John of Chlum. His progress through 
Germany was a missionary tour. Everywhere he 
invited discussion, posting up public notices in 
Bohemian, German, and Latin, expressing his will- 
ingness to give to all comers a view of his religious 
tenets, and a reason for the hope that was in him. 
Parish priests came out, drank his health in the 
stirrup-cup, and avowed that they were one with 
him. Burgomasters and citizens of towns where he 
stopped to refresh himself could not suffer him to 
take his dinner in peace, because of their yearning 



46 " NOW WE HAVE THEE \ " 

desire to hear of his doctrine. And wherever he 
lodged he left a copy of the Ten Commandments to 
instruct the extreme ignorance of his entertainers ; 
or, sprinkling some meal on table or floor, he would 
trace with his finger the same divine words. 

On the 3rd of November he saw the old city of 
the Council, with its blue lake and the white moun- 
tains of Appenzell. There was great stir in the 
place, for Pope John XXIII. had but just pre- 
ceded him; and papal court and retinue, mules, 
palfreys, and grooms, were subsiding into their 
lodgings. On the day after his arrival he found 
that a notice was posted on all the church-doors, 
charging him as a notorious heretic. Until the 
28th of November, Huss was left in quietness in a 
house which is still pointed out as his residence. 
He was busy preparing for his defence. On this 
day a stately embassy from the Pope called on him 
and invited him to follow to the Pope's palace. The 
brave knight John of Chlum took the alarm in a 
moment, and vehemently protested against any 
such movement. " Wait till my master the Kaiser 
come, and then let Master John be heard before the 
Council." "Ah, but they had no bad intention 
whatever," answered the smooth Bishop of Trent; 
and Huss meekly followed the embassy. The mis- 
tress of the house met him on the lower floor with 
tearful farewells. A sudden presentiment struck 
him at sight of that woman's tears, and with strong 
emotion he pronounced on her nis benediction. 
There was a horse in waiting; soldiers might be 
seen lining the neighbouring streets. John of 
Chlum kept close to his friend's side ; and scarcely 
had they reached the Chancery, than Huss caught 
the words running from mouth to mouth, " Now 
we have thee ! nor shalt thou escape till thou hast 



IMPRISONMENT AND ILLNESS. 47 

paid the uttermost farthing ! " Presently it was 
politely intimated to John of Chlum that " he might 
retire ; Master Huss would remain." Chlum rushed 
into the presence of the Pope and made an indig- 
nant appeal on behalf of the word of his emperor. 
"Ah, it is my cardinals," said his holiness. The 
same night Huss was placed under an armed guard, 
and a week after he was carried to a Dominican 
cloister on the river Rhine, and thrown into a nar- 
row and most noisome dungeon. When this ini- 
quity was made known by Chlum to Sigismund, 
he loudly expressed his indignation, and threatened 
to break open the prison-doors by force, unless 
they were flung open at his bidding and the pri- 
soner set free. And then the bold knight posted 
the Pope all over Constance as false to his word, 
and as offering wilful insult to empire and emperor. 
But the anger of a Kaiser against the Church was 
but the foam of a wave breaking itself against a 
rocky headland ; it frowned scorn upon his helpless 
fret and hollow roar. 

In the mean time, the process against Huss 
was regularly put in commission. "At least grant 
me an advocate," pleaded Huss. " Nay, not to a 
heretic," was the reply. " Well, then," said the 
prisoner to his judges, " let the Lord Jesus be my 
Advocate, who also will soon be your Judge." But 
by this time the horrible effluvia of his dungeon 
had brought upon him a violent fever, attended with 
acute bodily suffering. It was feared he was dying, 
dying too soon, dying in altogether the wrong 
way; and Pope John in haste sent him his own 
physician. His personal keepers had compassion 
on his sufferings, and led him out that he might 
breathe for a few moments the air of life. In pain 
and in fetters the heroic man sat at his prison-table 



43 HUSS DREAMS A DREAM. 

to write his answers to the subtle charges of heresy 
which had been drawn up against him. His letters, 
written at this time, are models of Christian feeling 
and beautiful revelations of spiritual experience. 
To his faithful John of Chlum he writes, " At one 
time God comforts, at another afflicts me; but I 
hope He is ever with me in my sufferings." In 
another letter : " His will be done, whether it please 
Him to take me to Himself, or to bring me back 
to you." " If the death come which is precious in 
the sight of the Lord, then let the name of the 
Lord be praised." " By the grace of God, my 
return to Prague is not a thing impossible ; still, I 
have no desire for it unless it be according to the 
will of the Lord in heaven." " But I hope that 
what I have spoken in secret will be proclaimed 
on the housetops." And in the very dreams of the 
night, in the silence of his cell, he had visions 
of his beloved Bethlehem in Prague; and he saw 
that Christ was everywhere represented on the 
walls, but there were troops of evil ones who tried 
to rub out his faithful delineations of his Redeemer ; 
and, alas ! they did destroy them. But, before morn- 
ing, other and better painters had been there ; and 
he gazed with prophetic rapture at their lovely re- 
presentations ; whereupon the blessed artists turned 
to the people and said, " Now let bishops and priests 
come and destroy these pictures ! " and in the 
people's great joy and his own he awoke. He 
told the dream to John of Chlum, and John gave 
its interpretation just as we do now with the light 
of fulfilment beaming full upon the past; though 
we are able to give to the mysterious artists the 
honoured names of Martin Luther, Philip Me- 
lancthon, and Ulric Zuingle. 

So passed the nights and days of dungeon life. 



THE POPE IN THE PRISON. 49 

At length, on the 2 1st of March, there were fresh 
sounds stirring and great excitement in council and 
city. Pope John had fled from Constance and had 
got off to Schaffhausen, whence he summoned his 
officials to join him. It was a leap as precipitous 
as that of the Rhine, and the descent was great 
indeed. The council was trying its hand at the 
unmaking of Popes ; and the man called Balthazar 
Cossa was no longer John XXIII. 

The so-called Pope gone, and the keepers fled, 
no food came to the prisoner. More important in- 
terests than those of a starving captive lay on the 
minds of the august assembly. But the Council 
at last remembered its languishing victim, and he 
was removed in his chains to the castle-tower of 
Gottleben. Chained day and night to a post, his 
friends forbidden to visit him, he suffered a violent 
return of illness: "proofs of God's love to me," 
said John Huss. In the miserable tower of Gott- 
leben he lay bound until the month of June, when 
he was removed to a prison in the Franciscan con- 
vent at Constance, to be replaced in his former cell 
by no less a personage than his former persecutor, 
the ex-Pope, John XXIII. The wheel was turn- 
ing fast. Was the coming chariot of deliverance 
near at hand for John Huss ? Ay, near at hand ; 
but it was fiery red — the glowing chariot of a 
martyr's apotheosis. 

On the 5th of June the Council permitted the 
captive to appear before it. For nearly six months 
he had been lying in unwholesome dungeons ; and 
now, sick and suffering, he stood before his judges. 
But his faith was of stronger texture than to fail in 
such an hour ; and when his own writings were laid 
before him, and he was asked if he acknowledged 
them to be his, he fearlessly said, "Yes;" declaring 

D 



50 " THAKKS FOR THY SAFE-CONDUCT." 

that he " was ready to retract any sentiment in 
which it could be proved he was in error/' An 
article was then read ; but when he began to defend 
it, citing numerous passages from Scripture in its 
support, he was coarsely interrupted, savage cries 
drowned his voice, and he was not suffered to utter 
another word. So John stood in silence ; and that 
" hearing before the Council," for which he had been 
pining for six months, was over. Two days later he 
was again summoned ; and now the Emperor was 
present at the sitting. With no less skill than 
courage didHuss defend himself against the subtlest 
wits of his age, the calumnies of foes, and the wilful 
distortions of his words. There were even English- 
men present, who had brought the Wycliff feud with 
them to Constance, and were eager to try the culprit 
by their own national test ; and yet it is pleasant to 
see that at least one of them, when he marked the 
intrepidity of the solitary confessor before the thou- 
sand enemies, broke forth with a true Englishman's 
love of " fair play," and said that " the word of 
Master Huss ought to be believed, and 'twas best 
to drop these wranglings about Realism and Nomi- 
nalism." It was something, too, to have the Kaiser's 
presence; and looking at him, Huss said pointedly, 
u I thank your Majesty for the safe-conduct." 
When this hard day's work was over, he wrote to one 
of his friends, " The Almighty God gave me to-day 
a strong and courageous heart." The following day 
the same scene was enacted over again ; while our 
sympathies are moved by one little entry in the 
private narrative, which states that the intervening 
night had been " wholly sleepless from toothache." 
Such minor things touch the common brotherhood 
within us. And yet on this third day of examina- 
tion the self-defensive weapons of the prisoner were 



"WILT THOU RECANT ? " 51 

so bright and keen, that he was able to foil his 
adversaries. Huss had declared that u he was falsely 
called a Christian who did not follow Christ in his 
daily walk/' " Nay," urged one of his examiners, 
" one may truly be a pope, bishop, or king, without 
being a true Christian; " and John turned towards 
him and said, " Then if John XXIII. were a true 
Pope, why have ye deposed him ? " Whereupon 
the Emperor himself was fain to interpose with the 
awkward explanation, " Verily the Council hath 
lately declared John a true Pope ; but on account of 
crimes whereby he soiled the Papal dignity, and for 
the squandering of Church property, they have 
deposed him." 

And now came the terrible question, " Wilt thou 
recant ? " and Huss made the solemn appeal, " I 
beseech and conjure you, by Him who is the God of 
us all, that you do not force me to do that which I 
cannot without contradicting my conscience, and 
without danger of eternal damnation." Utterly 
exhausted and worn out, Huss was now led back to 
prison; but he had strength enough left him to 
record, " Ah, what joy did I feel from the pressure 
of my lord John of Chlum's hand, which he was not 
ashamed to give me, the wretched outcast heretic, in 
my chains ! " All honour to John of Chlum ! His 
generous conduct reminds one of the choice little 
incident related by D'Aubigne, when the brave old 
knight George Freundsberg came up to Luther as 
he entered the Town Hall at Worms, and laying his 
hand on Martin's shoulder, shook his own white 
locks, bleached in many campaigns, and said, " My 
little monk, my little monk, thou hast a march and 
a struggle to go through, such as neither I nor many 
other captains have seen the like in our most bloody 
battles. But if thy cause be just, and thou art sure 



52 the kaiser's conscience. 

of it, go forward in God's name, and fear nothing ! 
He will not forsake thee." 

As he had refused to make the unconditional 
recantation required of him, Huss had now but faint 
hope of deliverance ; while his disappointment was 
deep that he had never been allowed that opportunity 
which he so earnestly desired of declaring the truth 
freely before that great gathering of nations in 
council assembled. He referred to his Kaiser's pro- 
mise, and then wrote, "But I think his words are 
as much to be relied on as his safe-conduct." Some 
of his prison-hours he now employed in writing an 
address to those who shared his views in Bohemia, 
finishing with these farewell words : — " I write this 
letter in prison and in chains, expecting to receive 
my sentence of death on the morrow, full of hope in 
God that I shall not swerve from the truth. What 
a gracious God hath wrought in me, and how He 
stands by me in wonderful trials, all this you will 
first know when we shall again meet together with 
our Lord, through His grace, in eternal joy." 

And did no voice of expostulation rise from the 
forests of his beloved Bohemia during the six 
months of suspense ? From the moment that the 
first act of treachery was made known, all Bohemia 
had been in a ferment. Three petitions, signed by 
well-nigh the whole body of Bohemian nobility, had 
reached the Council ; and a fourth of indignant 
appeal, in which Kaiser Sigismund was reminded of 
pledged honour and of broken word, had pricked the 
imperial conscience to the very quick. Not very 
enviable must have been the imperial feelings during 
these days, notwithstanding the vast personal relief 
of giving over the keeping of that untamed thing, a 
living speaking conscience, to the representative 
wisdom of the Church. The Church in council was 



"no faith to be kept with heretics." 53 

graciously willing to undertake all such charge ; and 
his most Catholic Majesty of Spain laboured to im- 
press upon the Emperor that " it would not be 
fitting to rescue a heretic from death, because, really, 
there was no such thing as a breach of faith with 
one who has already broken faith with God/' But 
still the Emperor's conscience was living and 
writhing ; wherefore the serpent-charmers drew its 
fang and made it harmless by issuing the scanda- 
lous decree, "that no faith should be kept with a 
heretic" 

Many members of the Council visited Huss in 
prison, worrying him with entreaties to recant, and 
suggesting dishonest subterfuges and mental reser- 
vations whereby he might keep his life and cheat 
his soul. But for all Huss had the same unfaltering 
reply. Not with stoical indifference — not with that 
rapt spiritual exaltation which despises the suffer- 
ings of the body — not with a feverish ambition to 
make a name and earn a deathless fame, did this 
heroic man await the kindling of his funeral pile. 
At this moment he svrote to his brethren in Bohemia 
a noble letter which breathes the lowly confidence 
of undying faith. These are some of its memora- 
ble words : — " most faithful Christ ! draw us weak 
ones after Thee ; for we cannot follow Thee if Thou 
dost not draw us. Give us a strong mind, that it 
may be prepared and ready. And if the flesh be 
weak, let . Thy grace succour us beforehand, and 
accompany us ; for without Thee we can do nothing, 
least of all can we face a cruel death. Give us a 
ready and willing spirit, an undaunted heart, the 
right faith, a firm hope, and perfect love, that pa- 
tiently and with joy we may for Thy sake give up 
our life." 

We must not look for full deliverance from educa- 



54 SIGISMUND BLUSHES. 

tional error even in a saintly man who was standing 
erect on such a vantage-ground of faith. He ex- 
pressed a hope that John the Baptist, on whose eve 
this letter was " written in chains/' " might pray 
for him to the Lord Jesus Christ;" and then soon 
after he asked and obtained permission to confess. 
These shreds would soon fall from him ; mere tatters 
were they of the old garment, which, though they 
defaced, could not seriously impair, the beauty of 
the perfect robe which enwrapped him. On the 6th 
of July Huss was once more led into the presence 
of the Council. Kaiser Sigismund sat there on his 
throne, the insignia of empire around him ; the 
princes and potentates grouped in full scenic state. 
In the midst of the assembly stood a wooden frame 
on which hung the priestly vestments of the pri- 
soner. Then was read the process of condemnation, 
embodying the charge that Master John Huss was 
a follower of English Wycliff, and that he dis- 
seminated Wycliffite doctrines. Many times Huss 
attempted to interpose a word ; but having pleaded 
in vain for liberty to speak, he fell on his knees and 
commended his whole cause to God and to His 
Christ. Then rising, he declared how he had come 
to Constance of his own accord with a safe-conduct 
from his Emperor ; and saying this he turned and 
looked the Kaiser full in the face. And then Sigis- 
mund blushed — " blushed violently," they say — 
"vehementer erubuit" Ah, that living writhing 
conscience again I there are asps that sting sharper 
than even tongues of flame. When the sentence 
had been read to the end, Huss, again falling on his 
knees, prayed, " Lord Jesus, forgive my enemies ; 
forgive them for the sake of Thy great mercy ; " and 
laughter rang through the hall. Then seven bishops 
approached him and clothed him in his priestly 



THE SECULAR ARM. 55 

vestments, in order that, one by one, and piece by 
piece, they might be taken from him, each with its 
fitting form of denunciation. " We take from thee, 
condemned Judas, the cup of salvation !" was pro- 
nounced as his hand was deprived of the eucharistic 
cup. " But I trust in God my Father," spake Huss, 
" and in my Lord Jesus Christ, for whose name I 
bear this, that He will not take from me the cup of 
salvation ; and I have a firm hope that I shall drink 
of it to-day in His kingdom." A cap with the 
inscription " Arch-Heretic," and painted all over 
with devils, was then placed on his head : " My 
Lord wore for me a crown of thorns ; why should 
I not be willing to wear for His sake this easier 
though shameful badge? I will do it, and gladly." 
" Now we give over thy soul to the devil," spake 
the officiating bishops: " But / commend into Thy 
hands, Jesus Christ, my soul by Thee redeemed," 
said Huss, raising his eyes heavenward. And now 
was enacted that tragic farce by which Rome ever 
professed to take water and wash her hands from 
all blood-stains ; the condemned Huss was formally 
delivered over " to the secular arm" Kaiser Sigis- 
mund commanded Duke Louis of Bavaria to consign 
John Huss to the u ministers of justice." It was 
in the minster that this frightful ceremonial took 
place ; and a brass plate, let into the floor, marks 
the spot where the martyr stood to receive sentence 
of death. As they led him out he passed a blazing 
pile of his own books. 

On they led him to a field outside the town. A 
stake was planted in the midst. There he kneeled 
and prayed, chiefly in the language of the Psalms, 
the 51st and the 31st. Again and again the by- 
standers caught the words, " Into Thy hands, Lord, 
I commit my spirit." When they made him rise 



56 A LITTLE HEAP OF ASHES. 

from his knees, " Lord Jesus, stand by me," prayed 
John Huss. Then he gave loving thanks to those 
of his keepers in his first prison who had dealt 
kindly by him ; and when placed on the pile of 
fagots, and bound with chains to the stake, he said, 
" I willingly wear these chains for Christ's sake, 
who w r ore still more grievous ones." And then they 
gave him one more chance of denying his Lord, 
and of buying off his life ; for, before the blazing torch 
touched its fuel, Van Pappenheim, Marshal of the 
Empire, rode up and asked once again, " Wilt thou 
recant?" But the martyr, refusing the bargain, 
began to chant, as the arrowy flames shot up around 
him, " Jesus, Son of the living God, have mercy 
upon me ! " Again he sang the same words ; and 
again he began, " Jesus" — but the waft of the fierce 
death reached him ; no voice came, yet the lips 
moved still ; and then it was over. The prayer was 
answered ; " Jesus had stood by him." 

There was a heap of ashes left in that field outside 
the city of Constance, and they were gathered up and 
flung broadcast over the waters of the Rhine. 

We have lost sight for a long season of Jerome of 
Prague, the chivalrous knight, the keen theologian, 
the burning orator, eager philosopher, and fervent 
disciple. Was it nothing to him that his beloved 
master was left alone in the thick of the fight ? But 
the Chevalier Jerome had, in fact, been hurrying 
about hither and thither, in hot haste, nearly all 
over the Christian world. There were scaly dragons 
to be fought and killed in every land ; there were 
serpents' teeth springing up in every furrow ; tour- 
neys in which he could break a lance and ride tilt 
against error ; recreant knights to be posted, and 
giants to be braved. His erratic tendencies have 
been previously described. But though he loved a 



WHERE IS JEROME? 57 

conflict dearly, he loved Truth better, and loved her 
for her own sake. The impulses of a generous soul 
were strong within him. He imagined that he had 
received a roving commission to work out the great 
cause of Reformation in all lands, and so he rode 
hard to the spot where his presence was most needed. 
If he revered any one more than John Huss, it was 
John Wycliff, — not his name as a watchword, but his 
doctrine as a body of pure divinity. Bohemia and 
Moravia were too narrow for him. Paris was an 
excellent field for fight, because of its Gersons and 
D'Aillys, with whom it was worth his while to con- 
tend. So also at Vienna ; so at Heidelberg ; so at 
Ofen, before Kaiser Sigismund himself; and in 
Poland, Lithuania, Russia, Jerome was telling out 
the truth with his own unmatched eloquence, in his 
own marvellously persuasive voice. His opponents 
were perpetually opening the doors of their prisons, 
and flattering themselves that they should get him 
within; but he always managed to slip through 
their fingers, with infinite dexterity, at the last 
moment, and was presently seen waving his hand on 
the road to some fresh encounter. But now, at last, 
the knight-errant of Reform had returned again to 
his own Prague. Master Huss had already gone to 
Constance — a noble, trustful act ; but sorrowful 
stories about him had reached the city. Master Huss 
was said to be in bonds ; he had not even obtained 
a hearing. The people were in an agony of appre- 
hension; and Jerome, tortured with fear for his 
friend, set out for Constance. Secretly and disguised 
he entered the city on the 4th of April, 1415, a little 
more than four months after his beloved master's 
arrival at the seat of the Council. But from 
all he saw and all he heard, he knew that neither of 
them was safe there ; and he repaired to the little 



58 THE KNIGHT-ERBANT OF REFORM. 

town of Uberlingen, four miles from the city, to gain 
time for thought Thence he addressed missives to 
the Emperor and Cardinals demanding a safe-con- 
duct Sigismund was not likely to grant a second 
document of this description, as the former had been 
torn to shreds ; and finding he could not obtain it, 
Jerome caused to be posted next day on the gates of 
the palace, on the dwellings of the Cardinals, on the 
doors of the churches, a writing in Latin, German, 
and Bohemian, setting forth that he, Jerome of 
Prague, was ready to defend himself before the 
Council against all charges brought against his 
faith, provided that security to come and go were 
given him. This was a bold but useless step, taken 
simply because he could not endure to leave his 
master alone in his sore distress. Failing to procure 
the promise which he sought, he entered into com- 
munication with the Bohemian knights in the city ; 
and, assured by them that nothing could be done, 
he sorrowfully turned his steps towards his own 
country. Slowly he moved along, debating many 
things with his heart by the way; so slowly and 
doubtfully did he travel, that he left ample time for 
the hounds to be slipped and set full upon his track, 
and still the mournful knight moved in sad leisure 
on his way. He had reached Hirschau, a little 
Swabian town, when he was suddenly pounced upon 
and carried back to Constance. There was a cita- 
tion out against him ; he was required to redeem 
the pledge which he had caused to be affixed to the 
palace-gates and church-doors of the city ; and, by 
way of affecting a becoming show of justice, the 
safe-conduct which he had then required as the con- 
dition of his appearance was given, but couched in 
the true language of Rome : " A safe-conduct," and 
"no violence to person, so far as in us lies, and 



A VOICE BENEATH THE WINDOW. 59 

orthodox faith exacts/' And so Jerome was led in 
chains before a session of the Council in the Francis- 
can convent on the 23rd of May. He looked around 
him, and the faces which he saw were not strange to 
his eye. He knew them well ; and he knew that he 
had aggravated them into fury at Paris, at Cologne, 
at Heidelberg, or wherever by a fiery flood of his 
eloquence he had borne down all argument, and 
overwhelmed authority, station, and prescriptive 
wisdom. One after another, his old opponents rose 
and flung at him some old gage of defiance, some 
challenge to single combat, or the shaft of some 
broken weapon. The famous Chancellor Gerson, 
that great doctor of the Sorbonne, did not think it 
beneath him to taunt a prisoner in chains with hav- 
ing in other days sought, as he said, to set " himself 
up as an angel of eloquence." And when Jerome, 
with his own happy skill, answered each one accord- 
ing to the man and his mode of reasoning, he 
heard the cry running through the hall, " Jerome 
must be burnt — must be burnt ! " With cool intre^- 
pidity, he looked around and said, " Well, if you 
desire my death, in God's name let it come." So 
Jerome was led to his cell. Scarcely was he alone, 
when he heard a voice beneath his window; it was 
the voice of Peter of Mladenowic. The imprisoned 
Huss had sent him to have speech with the young 
disciple, now in toils like himself. These were his 
words : " Master Huss hopes thou wilt stand fast by 
the truth, and not shrink even from dying for that 
for which thou hast so stoutly spoken." "Ay," said 
the disciple, from out of his cell, "I do hope, with 
the grace of God, to stand faithful to the truth even 
unto death. We have talked a good deal about 
death; now we are to learn what it is." And the 
colloquy was over. In the dead of the night there 



60 PANTING FOR DELIVERANCE. 

were other sounds about him ; there was the clank 
of an armed guard at his door ; the door opened, 
and Jerome was hurried away to a dungeon in a 
tower where, bound to a stake by hands and feet and 
neck, he could scarcely even turn his head. In this 
position bread and water were administered to him 
— nothing else. But the friendly voice that had 
spoken under his window was again in colloquy with 
his keepers, and better food was after a while pro- 
vided. In this dreadful bondage lingered for 
months the man in whom the love of liberty was 
nothing short of a passion, and freedom of move- 
ment an instinct ; one who had never learned to 
resist an impulse, or to curb a free-born thought. 
And there thehigh-souled knight stood or crouched at 
his dungeon-stake, with all his splendid gifts rusting 
within him, the iron bonds eating into his soul. 
Much he pondered on his master's fate ; but it was 
months after the Rhine received the ashes on its 
surface before a rumour of the story reached Jerome 
in his cell. 

In the mean time, Bohemia and Moravia were 
wild with exasperation. In September they sent a 
brief to the Council declaring their indignation at 
the burning of their own Huss, and at the shameful 
imprisonment of their Jerome ; and they announced 
themselves as resolved to contend even unto death for 
the law of Christ and the cause of His faithful wit- 
nesses. The Council now no longer laughed as was 
its wont ; the present was a grave threat. " Better 
force a recantation than light another fire;" this 
became the feeling of the assembly; for the fires 
were seen at too great a distance, causing excitement 
in remote places — "it was unpleasant." 

The length and severity of his confinement were 
beginning to sap the foundations of Jerome's cou- 




Jerome before the Council. 



See page 61. 



JEROME SPEAKS. 61 

rage. He was chafing and panting for deliverance; 
ay, deliverance at any cost. It is sorrow to see that 
daring spirit now beginning to tamper with tempta- 
tion, and to hold debates in which love of liberty 
at last silenced the protest of wounded conscience. 
At length the resolve was arrived at and notified to 
the Council : " Yes, I will recant." And so, on the 
23rd of September, 1415, Jerome was brought out 
before the assembly, and there read a form of recan- 
tation, abjuring all heresies whereof he stood accused 
— all heresies of Wycliff or Huss — and expressing 
approval of the sentence passed on the name of the , 
one and on the person of the other. Had he pur- 
chased liberty by all this ? Nay, not even that dear 
liberty, by the sale of his soul ; and as he moved 
back to the very same dungeon, only to looser fetters, 
Jerome of Prague was a broken-hearted man. In 
that dungeon he lay in darkness without and dark- 
ness within, in misery unutterable, until the 23rd of 
May of the year following, 1416. He had latterly 
refused to endure any further private examinations, 
and had been earnestly .entreating for a public hear- 
ing. On this day he obtained the freedom of speech 
for which he was well-nigh dying with intense 
desire. Of course the famous orator, Hieronymus 
Pragensis, was going to defend and support his 
recantation ; and there was a great gathering to hear 
him. For two days he spoke from seven o'clock in 
the morning until one in the afternoon, at first 
defending himself from all charges that had been 
brought against him one by one, historically follow- 
ing the whole Bohemian movement step by step, 
clearing the ground as he went, and telling the 
Council the long story of their own acts and deeds. 
The tale was so wondrously told, that they could not 
help but listen to that worn and haggard man stand- 



62 HE RECANTS HIS RECANTATION. 

ing alone in their midst. The fascination was com- 
plete as he fixed their eyes for hours, and led their 
minds in chains through the long dark history; 
while now and then he reined in his passionate elo- 
quence in mid-career, and darted through their very 
joints such shafts of pungent wit and stings of satire, 
that they quivered and writhed, yet listened still. 
At length, on the second day of his defence, the 26th 
of May, he suddenly changed his course, and with a 
breadth of learning which dazzled, and a force of 
description which stirred all souls, he touched bio- 
graphically on the long list of victims to cruel wrong, 
and specially to priestly artifice, which Christian, 
Jewish, and even pagan history has enrolled on its 
pages. He told the story of John Baptist's prison- 
death, and of Stephen's public martyrdom ; he de- 
scribed the cup of Socrates and the bath of Seneca ; 
and then, last of all, he painted before their minds 
the encircling flames out of which rose to heaven the 
soul of his master Huss. And looking round into 
the troubled faces of his high audience, he made 
known to all men, princes, priests, and scholars, 
that there was no sin which weighed heavier on his 
heart than this — that he had himself been moved, 
by fear of the like death, to pass a sanction on the 
condemnation of that sainted witness. Then he re- 
canted his whole recantation. He resumed every 
word he had been tempted to utter against English 
Wycliff or Bohemian Huss ; and referring to himself, 
he declared that he should not be the last victim of a 
cruel priesthood. Now turning to his speechless 
judges, he summoned them in prophetic vision before 
the judgment that was to come; and then the ema- 
ciated man ceased to speak. 

The Council broke up in great excitement. The 
sympathies of many were strongly stirred, and they 



WHAT SAID THE OFFICIAL ORATOR, 63 

whispered together about saving him. But that 
tremendous summons of his judges before the judg- 
ment-seat to render their account to God was felt 
to be the unpardonable offence which could only be 
purged by fire. There was a great man present, 
Poggio Bracciolini by name, a man who had the 
address to be secretary to no fewer than seven Popes, 
who ardently devoted himself to the revival of classic 
literature, and was the official orator of the Council 
of Constance, like the " certain orator named Ter- 
tullus" of old. This man of fine intellect owned no 
sympathy with Jerome's belief, and indeed was strik- 
ingly devoid of all religious feeling. But in a letter 
. to his friend Leonardo Aretino, he powerfully draws 
the impression which had been made on men's minds 
by Jerome's intrepid attitude and dazzling eloquence. 
" He had for 360 days," says Poggio, " been pining 
away in a dark tower full of offensive effluvia. It 
was a place where he could not even see, much less 
read or write. I pass over the mental anguish which 
must have daily tortured him, and which was enough 
to destroy the power of memory itself within him. 
And yet he cited so many learned and wise men as 
witnesses in behalf of his opinions, that he might 
have passed the whole of his time in all quietness in 
the study of wisdom. His voice was pleasant, clear, 
full-sounding, accompanied with a certain dignity ; 
his gestures fitted to excite indignation or pity, 
which, however, he neither asked for nor sought to 
obtain. He stood up fearlessly, undaunted, not 
merely contemning death, but even demanding it ; 
so that one might look upon him as a second Cato. 
Oh, what a man ! a man worthy of everlasting re- 
membrance!" Thus wrote the great scholar and 
successful man of the world, Poggio Bracciolini of 
Florence. "Take care not to show too much warmth 



64 THE " SECOND CATO." 

in this matter," wrote in reply his prudent friend 
the learned Aretino. 

In the mean time, a brief respite was allowed to 
Jerome, to give opportunity for second thoughts. 
But happily the exquisite torture which had been 
the cost of the former denial was enough for one 
man's lifetime ; and the Chevalier Jerome now stood 
firm as a rock. So on the 30th of May, in this 
same year 1416, he was brought forth to hear his 
condemnation. Once again he spoke the bitter 
truth to unwilling ears, and then he was made over 
to u the secular arm." He sang psalms and hymns 
in that voice of singular melody as they led him to 
the field where had perished his master. Poggio 
Bracciolini -went to see how " the second Gato" 
could suffer, and tells what he saw. He says that 
Jerome knelt long before the pile and prayed fer- 
vently. Whilst they chained him to the stake aud 
built up the fuel, he sang a spiritual song whose 
burden was the joy of martyrdom. When the fire 
was kindled at the back of the pile, he called to 
have it lighted before his face : " For if I had been 
afraid of this fire, I should not have come here," 
were his words. Then he addressed the crowd in 
the German tongue, and reminding them of John 
Huss, declared him to have been " a genuine 
preacher of the gospel of Jesus Christ." When the 
flames blazed up, he said, " Into Thy hands, 
God, I commit my spirit;" and then, in his own 
Bohemian tongue, " Lord God, have pity upon me ! 
forgive me ray sins ; for Thou knowest I have loved 
Thy truth." That was the last voice which came 
from out of the midst of the flames. And then 
Poggio Bracciolini went back to the city, pondering 
much upon the mystery of faith which he failed to 
comprehend. u No stoic," he writes, " ever suffered 



SPARKS FROM THE FIRES OF THE FIELD. 65 

death with so firm a soul as that with which he 
seemed to demand it. Jerome endured the tor- 
ments of the fire with more tranquillity than Socrates 
displayed in drinking his cup of hemlock. With 
cheerful looks he went readily and willingly to his 
death. He feared neither death nor the fire and its 
torture." The testimony of an unbought and un- 
biassed witness like Poggio Bracciolini, supported 
as it is by iEneas Silvius, is worth a volume of 
description from an admiring partisan. 

Thus perished John Huss and Jerome of Prague. 
But the war by which the people of Bohemia sought 
to avenge its teachers was one of the most destruc- 
tive on record. The sparks from those two fires of 
the field were enough to kindle the half of Germany. 
The notary Peter Mladenowic, whose voice had 
spoken courage to Jerome from beneath his prison- 
window, went home and wrote a life of Huss, which 
used to be read aloud in churches in order to teach 
the people the story of martyrdom. The letter of 
Poggio Bracciolini, describing the execution of 
Jerome, was annexed to a u Passional." Religious 
hymns, blended with the war-songs of Mount Tabor, 
and with satirical ballads on the clergy, fanned the 
wild enthusiasms of the people. Ziska, Nicholas of 
Hussinetz, and Procopius carried the victorious 
standard of Bohemia into Silesia, Franconia, Saxony, 
and Austria ; but though war blazed high, and evil 
passions were rife, and men were mad with wrongs, 
yet nevertheless the Reformation was suspended for 
another century. 




WATCHERS FOR THE DAWN. 



About a half- century before Martin Luther, with 
loud hammer and sharp nails, affixed his famous 
thesis to the church-door at Wittemberg, two men 
were sitting up very late at night in their university- 
cells. The one was at Erfurt, the other at Cologne. 
The whole Christian world had fallen into a deep 
sleep — a sleep which was nigh unto death; and these 
two learned schoolmen were watching for the first 
signs of an awakening. Their names, like their 
occupation and even their attitudes, were strangely 
similar ; the Professor of Erfurt was called John of 
Wesel ; the Doctor of Cologne was John Wessel. 
It is worth while to put the question to these solitary 
vigil-keepers : " Watchmen ! what of the night ? " 

Wesel and Wessel were born within the first 
twenty years of the fifteenth century, the exact dates 
being unascertainable. " Brother Martin" was born 
in 1483 ; so that it was long before daybreak when 
the two Johns first looked out from their casements 
into the thick darkness of the night. In order to 
keep the two biographies distinct, John of Wesel, 
who was a few years older in time than John Wessel, 
shall be treated first. 



" GREAT SUSANNA." 67 



JOHN OF WESEL. 

Through its whole course of 695 miles, from its 
urn amidst the glaciers of the Grisons to its many 
Netherlander mouths, the Rhine is rarely more 
beautiful than when it sweeps past the little town of 
Ober-Wesel. It stands on the river's left bank, not 
far from St. Goar ; and the wide compass of its old 
walls, with its richly wrought churches and pictu- 
resque round tower, testify that in the middle ages 
it must have been a much more important place than 
it is now. At present it has but 2300 inhabitants ; 
a mere village population. John is called in the 
Latin works of the day, " Joannes de Wesalia 
Superiore," John of Ober-Wesel; but his family 
name was Richrath, one still known amid the little 
townships of Rheinland. It would have been a 
satisfaction to know something about the parentage 
of the boy, and the influences under which this 
pioneer of the Reformation was trained. But he 
suddenly comes into view as an earnest student at 
the University of Erfurt, some seventy years before 
the son of the poor Thuringian miner graduated 
under the shadow of the same Alma Mater. The 
place had been important as early as the time of 
Charlemagne ; and even the Romans used to write 
and talk about Erfordia. The huge bell of its dom- 
kirche, " Great Susanna" by name, of fourteen tons 
calibre, had a voice loud enough to employ the busy 
echoes of all Thuringia ; and Erfurt was not likely 
to be overlooked as long as " Grosse Susanna " 
summoned the German youths to their studies. The 
university was the earliest in central Germany; and 
it stood alone in a wide sweep of surrounding country 
as the nursing mother of learning and science. But 



68 THE CREED IN THE BOX. 

Erfurt was unconsciously nurturing beside these a 
spirit of inquiry, which would never rest until some 
of the most vital questions which have moved the 
world should be answered to the satisfaction of the 
freeborn soul of man. Something of this may, 
beyond doubt, be traced to the remarkable migra- 
tion of students from Prague to Erfurt, at the time of 
the famous schism at the former city under the 
rectorship of Bohemian Huss. The old chroniclers 
declare that the scholars came trooping to Erfurt 
over the hills and through the forests in thousands ; 
and though the emigrants from the Bohemian 
capital were mainly opponents of John Huss, yet the 
very seeds of debate which they brought with them 
were sure to bring forth good fruit wherever they 
fell upon good ground. 

It is a satisfaction to believe that there were 
members of the Church of Christ even in that 
depraved age, scattered up and down over the papal 
world, who, having found the truth, were rejoicing 
in it as over hid treasure ; much like the poor Car- 
thusian monk, Brother Martin of Basle, who wrote 
his simple confession to "the truth as it is in 
Jesus, " in these touching words : " most merciful 
God ! I know that I can only be saved and satisfy 
Thy righteousness by the merit, the innocent suffer- 
ing, and death of Thy well-beloved Son. Holy 
Jesus ! my salvation is in Thy hands." And when 
he had secretly penned this little " credo" he shut 
up the writing in a wooden box, dug a hole in the 
wall of his cell, and buried it there. " If I cannot 
confess these things with my tongue, yet I may 
confess them with my heart and with my pen," 
further wrote our timid Brother Martin of Basle. 
But the world would never have known anything of 
the pious Carthusian and his true but shrinking 



THE JUBILEE. 69 

faith, if his little treasure-box had not been dis- 
covered on the 21st of December, 1776, when the 
people of Basle were taking down some old building 
which was known to have formed a part of the 
Carthusian convent. Brother Martin of Basle might 
say : " Oh, that my words were now written, that 
they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the 
rock for ever ! For I know that my Redeemer 
liveth." But it was reserved for Brother Martin of 
Wittemberg to lift up his resounding voice, so as all 
the world might hear, and say, " I will confess Thee 
before kings." 

John of Wesel graduated as Master of Arts at 
Erfurt in 1445. About this time he was ordained ; 
but he never assumed the tonsure or took the mo- 
nastic vow. Then followed in rapid succession his 
graduation as Master in Philosophy, his appointment 
as Professor of Holy Scripture, and his taking the 
degree of Doctor of Divinity. This last honour was 
conferred in 1456. He was now talked about as an 
ornament to the university, and its finest represen- 
tative man ; and Luther, long years afterwards, says 
of Erfurt : " John Wesalia ruled the university by 
his books ; and it was out of these that I studied for 
my Master's degree." 

But when Wesel had just set his foot on the first 
step of the ladder of promotion, Pope Nicholas V. 
announced that the year of jubilee was come, and 
that it must be joyfully celebrated all over Western 
Christendom. Multitudes instantly set forth for 
Eome. It was the Christian pilgrimage to Mecca ; 
and every one who reached the Holy City should 
rank as " Hadji" for the remainder of his days. 
Nay, more ; there was promise of the fullest forgive- 
ness of all his sins if, during his tarriance in the 
blessed city, he should faithfully visit the churches 



70 THE CARDINAL AND HIS STRONG-BOX. 

of the holy Apostles St. Peter and St. Paul once a 
day for the term of fifteen days. Thus did the 
jubilee with its pilgrimages resemble not only the 
Mahommedan's holy journey to Mecca; it was still 
more emphatically to represent the Jewish jubilee, 
" the year of release," the time for the remission of 
all debts, the wiping out of the long score of trans- 
gressions. The roads from the north were crowded 
with long trains of weary pilgrims. Princes and 
peasants, soldiers, schoolmen, and artisans, were 
struggling through the mountain-passes, foot-sore 
and heart-sore, tired and hungry. And what if they 
should drop down and die on the road ; die in their 
sins ; die before they could join in the great shout 
with which the first glimpse of the Eternal City 
was hailed in all the tongues of western Europe ! 
Countless multitudes made the pilgrimage: and 
countless gains flowed into the coffers of the Pope. 
" Pity the blessed jubilee is so soon over ! " sighed 
Pope Nicholas V. ; " why not let the blessing over- 
flow into the next year, 1451, from the fulness of 
1450?" And so the famous Cardinal Nicolaus of 
Cusa was summoned into the papal presence, and 
bidden to set out for the north, to tell those who 
had tarried at home that they might still divide the 
spoil of the festival by purchasing indulgences, and 
by dropping gifts into a strong-box prepared for the 
purpose, in return for the gracious concessions of his 
holiness. It was a rehearsal of the great drama 
which was to be performed sixty-seven years later : 
Nicolaus of Cusa, the eloquent son of a poor fisher- 
man, bore the part of Tezel, the son of the Leipsig 
goldsmith; Pope Nicholas V. was the Leo X. of 
his day ; and John of Wesel was the Luther who 
stepped forth from his cell to confront the salesman. 
Nicolaus of Cusa was mounted on a mule, and a 



THE JINGLE OF THE COINS. 71 

retinue followed with the chest. The princes and 
people, Hadjis of their time, and who had thus per- 
formed " the whole duty of man," came out to meet 
the envoy with jubilee-songs and with confident 
step ; while those who, from infirmity of will or of 
body, had remained at home, brought forth their 
little bags of money, and joined the long procession 
which escorted him into church. At last the heavy 
chest appeared at Erfurt. " Grosse Susanna" has 
something special to say that day to the Thuringian 
echoes, as the great man alighted at the door of the 
cathedral church. Mass celebrated and the sermon 
preached, Nicolaus of Cusa mounted again and rode 
to the monastery of St. Peter, from whose shaven 
lawn he again recommended his wares to the people. 
On another day he harangued the crowd from the 
Petersberg ; and so vast was the concourse that 
several people were crushed to death in their frantic 
efforts to learn how sin could be pardoned and its 
penalties compounded for. John of Wesel listened ; 
Cardinal Cusa was specious, impassioned, and elo- 
quent ; but the sound of the coins, as they jingled 
into the chest and danced upon their fellows, must 
have been a jarring musical accompaniment to the 
ears of the Professor of Holy Scripture, who had 
but newly risen from the reading of that word which 
says : " Thy money perish with thee, because thou 
hast thought that the gift of God may be purchased 
with money." 

Cardinal Cusa passed on to other scenes and 
added crowds; and John of Wesel pondered the 
matter in the silence of his university chamber. 
Four years later, another eloquent missionary came 
over the Alps, by command of Pope Nicholas, to 
confound the followers of Huss, and to preach a 
crusade against them. He was the famed orator, 



iZ JOHN OF THREE HUNDRED BOOKS. 

John of Capistrano, an Italian Franciscan, hot in 
zeal and burning in speech. He was one who bore 
the nimbus of a saint about his tonsured head in 
the eyes of the populace, and his reputed miracles 
procured for him canonisation after his death. But, 
after hearing the Franciscan orator, John of Wesel 
walked back again to his chair, and prepared to write 
his great protest against indulgences. In 1458 he 
was elected vice-rector of his university, although 
the imputation of holding innovating views was 
beginning to excite opposition against him. There 
was an especial opponent, one John Hagen (it was 
an era of Johns), a celebrated theologian of Erfurt, 
who published more than 300 treatises. The fer- 
tility of German authors is no new feature of our 
19th century ; and this John of 300 books directed 
one of them against the very dubious sentiments of 
Professor Wesel. No doubt it was racy in style ; 
for John Hagen was so fervent at his work, that, 
oil failing, he was wont to feed his midnight lamp 
with the little pats of butter which were provided 
to help down his dry crusts. 

The Romish doctrine respecting indulgences en- 
closes the very essence of Romish error ; and the 
reformers of the succeeding century, with their in- 
trepid leader at their head, assumed an impregnable 
stand-point when they mounted upon Tezel's money- 
chest to inveigh against the corruptions of the pa- 
pacy. Wesel had found a similar pulpit in the 
earlier age ; and though he had a smaller circle of 
auditors, and although at the very last his solitary 
voice faltered amidst the hail-storm of persecution 
which his teaching had evoked, yet we must never 
forget that he stood out alone to protest against the 
great evil of the day, and that he laid bare the very 
foundations of this mighty iniquity. As early as the 



"the treasure of the church. " 73 

year 1096, Pope Urban II. had solemnly promised 
"Plenary Indulgences" to all the sons of Holy 
Mother Church who should buckle on armour and 
go over seas to fight the Saracen ; and for 200 years 
the obedient sons flocked over to Palestine, hoping 
to be washed white in the red sea of Paynim blood. 
But they shone no fairer in heart or life when they 
returned, if return they did ; and the swarthy brow 
and sunken cheek were the best signs they could 
show of the grace of crusade. A shorter journey 
would not so severely try the health and the fortunes 
of the devotees ; and so the Indulgentias Plenarias " 
were promised to all good sons who should join the 
military expeditions against the heretics hiding in 
the mountain-girded valleys of the Waldenses, or in 
the shy hamlets of Savoy or Provence. The school- 
men had proven to the satisfaction of men's minds 
that the merits of Christ being much more than suf- 
ficient for the needs of sinners, and this superfluous 
merit being swollen by the added merits of saints 
and martyrs, a vast fund was thereby established, 
called the " Treasure of the Church." Into this 
mighty treasury were perpetually flowing the "works 
of supererogation" performed by all faithful children 
of the Church. On this treasury there was a lock ; to 
this lock there was, of course, a key, and where should 
the key hang but at the girdle of him who had received 
from St. Peter himself the transmitted power of the 
keys ? It was soon found that the key would not 
turn in the lock unless the quid pro quo appeared in 
the form of a little heap of money. This was but 
fair ; it was an open mercantile transaction. But 
for the information of the commercial world a regular 
tariff of prices would be a vast help. A regular tariff 
was published, and at length the concern was con- 
ducted with a skill and a business-like regularity 



74 wesel' s protest. 

which would not have disgraced the house of a 
Fugger, a Rothschild, or a Baring. Jubilees supplied 
a vast stimulus to trade ; and then Cardinal Nicolaus 
de Cusa, having received for the season the loan of 
the key, came with his chest to Erfurt. The thing 
had grown into the proportions of a mighty soul- 
destroying sin. John of Wesel, as we have seen, 
mused upon it in his solitary cell, until he could no 
longer refrain, and he spoke with his tongue and his 
pen. " Intending," he says, in his great " Disputa- 
tion," " to answer the question whether it be in the 
Pope's power to grant Indulgence, and thereby to 
absolve the individual from all penalties, I, John of 
Wesel, being appointed a Professor of Holy Scrip- 
ture, although the least, protest at the outset that it 
is not my intention to say or write anything in any 
way contradictory of the truth of the faith, as that 
is contained in Scripture." Surely John of Wesel 
here struck the very key-note of that intrepid " De- 
claration" which, some seventy years later, made 
known the burning of the Pope's Bull: " I, Martin 
Luther, Augustine monk at Wittemburg, wish all 
men to know," &c. And then Wesel lays down his 
seven propositions, based broadly upon the authority 
of Holy Scripture, and strongly buttressed by cita- 
tions from its text. In these propositions he demon- 
strates that the doctrine of Indulgences cannot be 
proved from Scripture ; and he even advances some 
steps beyond the ground taken by Luther in his 
ninety-five theses. But the age was not ready for 
John of Wesel, and men were too busy with their 
buying and selling to listen to his teachings. 

About the year 1460, Wesel was summoned as a 
preacher to Mayence ; but the professor was de- 
ficient in physical if not in moral courage — an in- 
firmity which painfully revealed itself in an after 



WESEL RUNS AWAY, 75 

day ; and now a pestilence breaking out in the city, 
Wesel toot fright and fairly ran away. Worms 
was the next place of his abode and the scene of 
his teachings. There he resided for seventeen years, 
and we find him again leaving tracks in a place 
whereon Luther afterwards planted his ponderous 
foot. But here he encountered a more formidable 
opponent than John Hagen of Erfurt, with his 
butter-fed lamp. This was Reinhard of Sickengen, 
Bishop of Worms, a man of will and of action. It 
would be dangerous to cross that man's path, though 
pleasant enough to walk by his side. But Wesel 
began to preach at Worms with wonderful vigour, 
fervour, and evangelical clearness. He had pene- 
trated to the very heart of the Gospel, and in preach- 
ing Christ and His righteousness, he also upheld 
the work of the Holy Spirit in the heart, and in- 
sisted on the importance of a life of holiness in con- 
formity with the spiritual law of God. He insisted 
that " Scripture is the only sufficient guarantee for 
unity of faith." He expressed his fear lest " the 
doctors should give a wrong, deceptive, and false 
interpretation ; " therefore it was better that the 
Bible should be explained solely " by itself" " But," 
exclaimed he, "it is by the grace of God alone that 
all are saved who are ever saved at all." " What is 
not called in Scripture sin/' he says, " I, for one, 
will not reckon sinful." " I despise the Pope, the 
Church, and the Councils, and exalt Christ. May 
His word dwell in us richly." 

Wesel was an old man now. He had been lifting 
up his voice at Worms for seventeen years against 
the sins and the errors of the times. It could be 
borne no longer. Innumerable vexations and perse- 
cutions had for some time beset him; and the old 
man specially complains that he had been robbed of 



76 THE OLD MAN BEFORE THE INQUISITION; 

his natural sleep to such an extent as to threaten 
life ; yet still he preached the Word, and disregarded 
consequences. Was there no tribunal before which 
the contumacious innovator could be cited ? Bishop 
Reinhard of Sickengen knew well that there was one 
ready to his hand ; and in February 1479 John of 
Wesel was formally arraigned before a court of the 
Inquisition in the city of Mayence. It was Friday, 
the 8th of February; and a great array of grave 
theologians had gathered together. There were the 
archbishop and the archbishop's suffragan; there 
were troops of masters and doctors from Heidelberg; 
the vicar-count of this, the custos-count of that; 
there were prelates, rectors, deans, and canons. 
First it was ordained that " Master Wesalia" should 
be sworn to deliver up all and every writing and 
tract, in order that by his own words he might be 
condemned. Extracts were now made from his 
pestiferous writings ; and then doctors, masters, and 
churchmen sat down to dinner at the archbishop's. 
All things being now ready, at seven o'clock in the 
morning of Monday the 11th, the learned array, 
dressed out with the official finish of fiscal and 
beadles, met at the Minorites', for trial of John 
of Wesel concerning the dark sin of heresy. 

Mayence, under the name of Maguntiacum, had 
been in the Roman period the very heart of a line of 
fortresses built along the Rhine as a rampart against 
the wild tide of barbaric invasion. The spot where 
Drusus had pitched his camp was the fitting place 
for the Rome of an after day to make her stand 
against the hated inroad of a worse Germanic in- 
cursion. John of Wesel had exclaimed in his 
earlier days, when life was valiant within him, and 
faith strong, and love fervid, " Let the flesh be 
beaten to fragments, and the old man suffer afflic- 



ALAS FOR JOHN OF WESEL ! 77 

tion ; let the body of sin die, that the spirit may be 
saved and the new man rise again; let the rod of 
correction smite ; but do Thou, Lord, grant 
courage to bear it ; let waves of temptation break 
in, but do Thou give strength to surmount them ; 
let persecution arise, but do Thou send victory from 
heaven." But he was an old man now, bowed down 
and broken in spirit. Sickness, caused by vexatious 
persecutions, had brought him to the edge of the 
grave. Will he stand now, erect and firm, militant 
for the faith, a leader in the " noble army of 
martyrs " ? Alas for John of Wesel ! But we will 
go on. 

The Inquisitor rose and said at the outset, "If 
Master John ask mercy, he shall have it ; but if he 
will not ask it, we shall proceed without mercy." 
Thereupon the suffragan and another were com- 
missioned to go and " admonish him to renounce 
his errors, to return to a better mind, and sue for 
mercy." A long time they were absent; at last 
they reappeared, leading between them the aged 
professor leaning on a staff, pale and stricken. 
They pointed to a place in the centre of the circle, 
immediately facing the Inquisitor, and made him 
sit down on the ground. It was well ; he could 
not long have stood. And then he was asked if he 
meant to adhere to his opinions, or would submit 
himself to the Church. Wesel replied that, " if 
in his writings he had erred, he was willing to re- 
cant." " Dost thou, then, ask mercy?" queried the 
Inquisitor. " Why should I ask mercy," he re- 
plied, "not having been convinced of any crime, 
fault, or error?" Further pressure was brought 
to bear upon him ; and at last the feeble words 
were spoken, " I ask for mercy." Then followed 
a long, harassing, and bewildering examination. 



78 TO THE SAME DUNGEON. 

in which the answers of poor Wesel are anything 
but clear. But he stood firm on the matter of In- 
dulgences ; and further, when interrogated con- 
cerning Christ's vicegerency on earth, he declared 
that " he did not believe Christ left any vicegerent; 
for He had Himself said, when about to leave the 
world, * Lo, I am with you always ; ' distinctly 
intimating that He did not intend to appoint any 
one as His substitute. If a vicar signifies one who 
in the master's absence is to perform his work, 
then Christ has no vicar upon earth/' Then the 
aged professor was led back to his dark and filthy 
prison, while the court again sat down to dinner. 
The next day the painful scene was enacted over 
again, Wesel showing a want of intellectual clear- 
ness, but making a firm stand on several vital 
points of scriptural truth. On the following day 
he was wavering, and growing thoroughly bewil- 
dered. " If you will take the responsibility upon 
your consciences, I will recant," said the trembling 
old man ; " if, however, I lose my wits, it is not 
I that do it." Perhaps it was reason that was 
wavering rather than faith. Friday came; the 
old professor — would that we could write confessor 
— had been incessantly worried by arguments, even 
while in his dungeon, and at last the word passed 
triumphantly from mouth to mouth, " Master Wesel 
is going to recant." Wesel was once more brought 
before the tribunal. He attempted to kneel, but 
was too weak even to change his attitude when 
once he had sunk on a seat. After his excessive 
trembling had a little subsided, he spoke : "I vo- 
luntarily confess that errors have been found in my 
writings and sermons. These errors I now recant. 
Do not send me back again to the dark and filthy 
prison ! " It was a touching plea from an old man ; 



IMPRISONMENT IN A MONASTERY. 79 

but it was refused. On the Sunday a public repe- 
tition of the same humiliating scene was enacted ; 
and then came the burning of his books, instead of 
himself, by the sentence of the Inquisition. He saw 
his works carried to the pile, and shedding many 
tears, he appealed from the sentence of men to the 
sentence of God. 

To keep him perfectly harmless, he was impri- 
soned for life in the Augustine Monastery at May- 
ence. Such is Home's pardon ; such the bitter 
fruitage of a recantation ; and ere two years had run 
out, the old man had died in his bonds. 

Did Wesel deny his Lord before men? He 
certainly on his trial confessed Him on many of 
the leading points on which he had taken a firm 
stand through a long life. But at the last, through 
great infirmity of the flesh rather than of the spirit, 
he had weakly sought to throw that responsibility 
from which he could not escape on the souls of 
others, and in vague and general terms had faltered 
out, " I recant/ 5 Perhaps his compassionate Mas- 
ter may have " turned and looked upon him" in 
pitying love. We know that John of Wesel " went 
out and wept bitterly." They say "he pined with 
sorrow, and then died." Serrarius, the Romish 
author of the History of Mayence, says of him, 
" It is evident that the devil intended to have com- 
menced with this person the tragedy (of the Re- 
formation) which he afterwards performed with 
Luther, if he had not been seasonably and wisely 
prevented here in Mayence." The student of John 
of Wesel's life closes the last blotted page with a 
sigh; but while mourning that his last days were 
not his bravest days, he is not at liberty to forget 
that the worn-out old man stood alone in the face 
of irresponsible power, without a single whisper 



80 JOHN WESSEL, 

of sympathy or grasp of a friendly hand to re- 
assure him ; that he had been feeling his own way 
doubtfully from darkness to light all his life long; 
that he had not attained to intelligent conviction 
on many of the great principles which even Luther 
was slow to embrace ; and that he spent his days, 
up to the feeble and timid evening hour, in the 
illustration of his own motto, " Sobrie nobis, juste 
fratribus,pieDeo" (" Soberly towards ourselves, justly 
towards our brethren, piously towards our God "). 

JOHN WESSEL. 

Superior to John of Wesel in genius, in intellec- 
tual attainment, and in general sagacity, was the 
" theological forerunner of the Reformation," John 
Wessel. He was the great thinker of the pre- 
formation age. In the Herrenstrasse, in the town 
of Groningen, there is a house whose gable still 
bears a coat-of-arms in which a goose stands con- 
spicuous. Under this family cognizance there lived, 
in the early part of the fifteenth century, a worthy 
baker of the name of Herman Wessel. His wife 
traced her descent from the important family of 
Clantes ; and she gave birth in 1419 or 1420 to a 
boy with one distorted foot and with very weak eyes. 
And yet that little lame boy, the baker's son, lived 
to receive from his contemporaries the extravagant 
title of "Lux Mundi" (" Light of the World"), 
as well as the somewhat dubious compliment of 
" Master of Contradictions." The lad also bore the 
family name of Gansfort, or Goesewart in its Dutch 
form, which had supplied the symbolic goose to the 
coat-of-arms ; but when, in after years, it became 
worth while to insult the great scholar and theolo- 
gian, his enemies punned upon his name and called 
him " Goosefoot," in allusion to the deformed ankle- 



a BRETHREN OF THE COMMON LOT/' gl 

bone and the faulty gait. The opponents of John 
Huss had also rejoiced in the great Bohemian's 
name, which signifies " goose ; " but it took another 
shape in the famous dream of the Elector Frederic 
the Wise, when he saw in the vision of the night, thrice 
repeated, amonk wielding alongpen that reached from 
Wittemberg all the way to Eome, a pen drawn from 
the wing of a Bohemian goose a hundred years old. 
When Wessel was yet a little boy he lost both his 
parents ; and then occurred a pretty episode which 
brings to mind the singing-boy of Eisenach and the 
" good Shunamite," Ursula Cotta, who opened her 
heart and her door to the chilled and hungry young 
Martin Luther — an act whose fragrant memory made 
him exclaim, long years afterwards, " There is nothing- 
sweeter than the heart of a pious woman." Our 
lame orphan-boy of Groningen found a home under 
the roof of a lady belonging to his mother's family, 
Oda Clantes by name. She was a matron of noble 
qualities, virtuous and feminine ; and she took the 
orphan into companionship with her only son, 
educating the two boys together. They were soon 
sent to Zwolle, to be taught in the establishment 
of the " Brethren of the Common Lot," then highly 
esteemed as an educational institution. A remarkable 
man was at this time living as a canon on Mount St. 
Agnes, which is about a half-league beyond one of 
the town-gates at Zwolle. This was Thomas k 
Kempis, author of the " Imitation of Christ," The 
young Wessel was instantly attracted by the con- 
templative piety of the monk; and in the fervour 
of admiration for his friend and his friend's new 
book, he was greatly tempted to take the vows in 
the monastery of Mount St. Agnes. But he soon 
discovered that there was something anta . onistic in 
their minds. John was earnest, eager for action, 

F 



82 TIIE HOLE IN THE WALL. 

athirst for knowledge, and burning to reform the 
grave errors of the day. Their paths soon diverged. 
Thomas fervently adored, the Virgin, and presented 
her to young Wessel as the object of especial reve- 
rence. " Father, why do you not rather lead me to 
Christ, who so graciously invites those who labour 
and are heavy laden to come unto Him?" was 
John's query. Thomas was greatly given to fasting 
and other mortifications ; and as he was once exhort- 
ing Wessel to follow the same course, " G-od grant 
that I may always live in purity and temperance, 
and fast from sin and vice !" exclaimed the youth. 
Thomas a Kempis was so filled with wonder at his 
pupil's novel views, that he closely folded the matter 
to his own contemplative soul, and was led a little 
to modify some of the severities of his system. 
Ilowever, the independent young scholar outwardly 
conformed to the brethren's habits, shaved his head, 
and walked about in gown and hood. But no bonds 
could repress his freedom of thought. He dis- 
covered that there was a youth of true piety, John 
of Cologne by name, who occupied the little convent 
chamber adjoining his own. John of Cologne was 
a painter and a goldsmith of great skill ; but he 
had felt the vocation to a religious life, and had 
come to Mount St. Agnes in the fond hope of being 
lifted nearer heaven. A sympathy was established 
between the young neophytes; a hole in the wall 
was made the channel of communication between 
soul and soul ; and while John of Cologne breathed 
into the adjoining cell the simple aspirations of a 
fervent piety, John Wessel in return instructed the 
artist in science and general knowledge. Perhaps 
there were " eaves-droppers" outside the doors of 
the twin-cells ; for Wessel soon found that a little 
swarm of enemies was clustering about him in 



OLD SCHOLASTICISM. 83 

cloister, refectory, and chapel ; so he wrote a defence 
of his way of life amongst the u Brethren of the 
Common Lot," and set forth on his travels. And 
first he took up his residence at the birthplace 
of his dear brother of the cell, Cologne ; that grand 
old city which sits so queenlike upon its sweeping 
river, the very " Venice of Germany." Here the 
" poor scholar" took refuge in a free establishment 
called the " Lawrence Bursary," founded by one of 
his own townsmen of Groningen, Dr. Laurentius, a 
hard man, who used to boast that he had pushed 
John Huss into the fire with his own hand at Con- 
stance. But Wessel did not find the fountain of 
knowledge in Cologne as pure even as that little 
rivulet which had welled out of the rock on Mount 
St. Agnes. It was a stagnant reservoir of old scho- 
lasticism. Albert the Great and the " Seraphic 
Doctor," Thomas Aquinas, were the saints who 
were chiefly invoked beside its muddy waters. A 
gloomy scholastic dogmatism ruled its theology; 
an ignorant intolerance narrowed its philosophy ; 
persecution soon afterwards became its holiday in- 
dulgence ; and Cologne was the great assize-hall of 
the German Inquisition. Yet something Wessel 
gained even here. He fell in with some exiled 
Greeks, who taught him the grand tongue of De- 
mosthenes and Plato ; so that Greek was now added 
to the Hebrew which he had acquired from some 
learned Jews whom he had previously encountered. 
They say he also mastered Arabic ; at all events, he 
was laying the foundations of a vast erudition, 
which soon made him the intellectual wonder of his 
age. He kept a " commonplace book," which he 
called his " Mare magnum;" and into it flowed a 
thousand little streams of thought which had their 
spring in his own head, or which flowed from the 



8t "master of contradictions." 

cisterns of others. This was a choice text-book for 
future disputation ; and doubtless the " Master of 
Contradictions" often dipped up very salt waters 
from his " Great Sea," to the infinite disgust of 
papist and scholiast. His stay at Cologne seems to 
have done much in refining his perceptions, and 
giving him the power of discriminating between 
truth and error ; and having taken his degree as 
doctor, and having been appointed a professor, he 
set forth on a grand tour from university to univer- 
sity. It was the habit of the age. A sort of 
intellectual knight-errantry prevailed ; the young 
esquires of learning earned their knighthood by 
breaking a pen's point with some rival in a remote 
cell, and won the fickle smile of Fame by hanging 
cap and gown at the door of some militant univer- 
sity. But John Wessel had a deeper quest ; he was 
roaming in search of truth. He went to Louvain, 
but it was not resident there ; to Heidelberg, where 
it was scarcely known by name ; to Paris ; to the 
several cities of Italy ; and at last to Rome. " Mother 
and head of the Church, and of the world," where 
should truth be enthroned if not on her own seven 
mystical hills ? 

In Paris he found great intellectual activity. It 
was the most celebrated school of western Christen- 
dom. Expatriated Greeks had brought with them 
the language and the lore of their own classic land. 
But absurd debates betwixt Nominalist and Realist 
employed the burning eloquence of her scholars ; 
and the " Sentences " had many more scholars than 
the Scriptures. Here, at a later period, Wessel be- 
came acquainted with that wonderful boy, " the 
sweet- voiced chorister" of Pforzheim, whom the 
music-loving Margrave of Baden had sent to the 
Paris University in company with his son Frederic. 



BREAD AND BOOKS. 85 

This was the famous John Eeuchlin, one of the most 
important precursors of the Eeformation ; because it 
was he who revived the knowledge of the Greek and 
Hebrew tongues in Germany, and thus prepared the 
way for the intelligent study of the sacred text, and 
for its rendering into the home-language of the peo- 
ple. He was busily transcribing the Greek classics 
for the use of students richer than himself, and was 
thus laboriously earning money enough to pay for 
bread and books, to young Eeuchlin the two great 
necessaries of life. Wessel turned upon the youth 
of eighteen the light of his benignant encourage- 
ment, and likewise threw a ray into his mind on 
some weightier matters than the poetry of Homer. 
" It is possible," said Wessel, " that the Pope may 
after all be deceived. Christ has completely recon- 
ciled and justified man, therefore all satisfaction made 
by man is blasphemy against Christ. To God alone 
belongs the power of granting absolution from sin ; 
we need not, therefore, confess our sins to the priests. 
And there is no purgatory, unless it be God Himself, 
who, as a consuming fire, can purify from all pollu- 
tion." It were worth while for Eeuchlin to go to 
Paris, if it were only to listen to such stirring sounds 
as these. He became the great restorer of Hebrew 
literature among the Christians of Europe; but it 
ought not to be forgotten that John Eeuchlin gained 
his first knowledge of Hebrew from John Wessel. 

Wessel arrived at Paris about the year 1452, when 
he was thirty-two years of age ; and he resided for 
sixteen years at this time in that capital of Charles 
VII., and afterwards of his odious son, the gloomy 
tyrant of Plessis-les-Tours, Louis XL* At last, 

* The visit to Paris was repeated in after years, as must be in- 
ferred from the apparent date of the acquaintance with young John 
Reuchlin. 



86 THE DOGS OF LYONS. 

somewhere about 1470, he made his journey to 
Rome, taking Lyons on his way, and even pausing 
to make a note of a touching incident which he wit- 
nessed at the latter place, — how a dog, which was 
devotedly attached to his master, when he lost him, 
went out, laid himself down, and died of a broken 
heart on the new-made grave. Wessel drew from 
this scene a lesson of faithful devotion and whole- 
hearted love to a higher service. There is on record 
the story of another dog of Lyons in old times which 
lost his life in fighting on behalf of his master's 
child ; but the poor folk around, instead of turning 
the incident into a teaching parable, like Wessel, 
actually canonised the dog as a martyr, and made 
him a patron saint of little children ! 

At length the great scholar and theologian 
reached Rome. Will his doubts be solved, his 
aspirations be satisfied, the protest of his heart and 
life be subdued by the overwhelming sanctions and 
sanctities of the place? It was otherwise with a 
Saxon monk who visited Rome between forty and 
fifty years later. That Saxon monk turned away 
from the pontifical city full of grief, indignation, 
and disgust. " If any one would give me a hun- 
dred thousand florins," said he, " I would not have 
missed seeing Rome." Similar was the effect 
upon the ingenuous mind of Luther's precursor ; 
and the visit to Rome established, strengthened, 
and settled him as a reformer. At Paris John 
Wessel had previously made a scholarly friendship 
with a certain Francis de Rovere. During his 
stay in the city of the Popes, his Paris friend was 
elected to the vacant seat of St. Peter, under the 
name of Sixtus IV. The costly embellishment 
of his capital, and the aggrandisement of his 
Vatican library, will not cover the stern severity 



THE BIBLE INSTEAD OF THE BISHOPRIC. 87 

and the nepotism which disgraced the papacy of 
Francis de Rovere. Wessel waited upon the new 
Pope to offer his congratulations. " Hast thou no 
favour to ask, my son ? " said his holiness with a 
golden smile, which expressed bishoprics at the 
very least. "Holy father," said Wessel, "you 
know I have never aspired after great things ; but 
now that you occupy the place of supreme priest 
and shepherd upon earth, my desire is that you 
may so administer your exalted office, that when 
the Chief Shepherd shall appear, He may say to 
you, ' Good and faithful servant, enter into the 
joy of thy Lord.'" "That is a matter which be- 
longs to me" replied his holiness ; " thou shouldst 
now ask something for thyself" "Well, then, I 
ask you to give me a Greek and Hebrew Bible 
which is in the library of the Vatican." "It shall 
be done," said the astonished Sixtus. " But, foolish 
man ! why didst not ask a bishopric, or the like?" 
" Because of that I have no need," said Wessel. 
An order was summarily made out, and Wessel 
carried off in triumph from Rome the precious 
Codex for which his soul had longed. Two hun- 
dred years afterwards this interesting manuscript 
of Holy Scripture was still extant. It was long 
stored up in a convent near his native Groningen, 
where John Wessel passed some of his advanced 
years. 

Florence was visited; so was Venice; so was 
Basle; and at length Heidelberg, that beautiful 
city of the Neckar, from whose crumbling castle- 
walls the charmed tourist catches the sheen of the 
distant Rhine, as well as many a glimmer from 
the stream of history. But at Heidelberg a theo- 
logical cabal was busily worked by the enemies of 
Wessel; and the "Lux Mundi," as he was now 



88 LUTHER S OPINION OF WESSEL, 

very generally, but almost blasphemously, called, 
was not suffered to throw any light on his favourite 
topic, theology. Yet, restricted as he was, Wessel 
was able to cast stray gleams into many a cell in 
the University, leaving traces of spiritual illumina- 
tion on its dark walls that could never be effaced ; 
and when Martin Luther came to Heidelberg in 
1518 to hold a disputation, he found that in very 
truth the great " Master of Contradictions " had 
been there before him, breaking up many a time- 
honoured " refuge of lies." 

The great Reformer gave to Wessel the title of 
"the God-taught;" and in an epistle prefixed to 
his works he says, " If I had read them before, my 
enemies might have said that Luther had borrowed 
everything from Wessel, so much do our writings 
breathe the same spirit." 

The evening hour at last came, and, to make 
Wessel yet more a wonder of his age, it was calm 
and peaceful. He was perpetually appealing to the 
Bible, and measuring the Church by the Word; 
constantly impugning tradition and slighting the 
Pope and the hierarchy; pointing with absolute 
reliance and fervent affection to Christ as the 
one Mediator and Redeemer ; assailing indulgence, 
penance, and purgatory ; and yet John Wessel was 
permitted to prepare his deathbed, smooth his last 
pillow, and lie down to die in peace. He had been 
much disquieted by the persecution of his friend 
John of Wesel, for whom he entertained a high 
esteem; and he had, moreover, a vision of fagots 
blazing in readiness for himself. But happily he 
only saw the glare of the flames, and never felt 
their beat. The halo of fame, which was always 
playing round his head, was no doubt a warning 
to his enemies that they had better not venture too 



WESSEL S LAST DATS. 89 

near ; and he had a powerful protector in the Bishop 
of Utrecht, David of Burgundy, half-brother of 
Charles the Bold, who wrote to him in these terms : 
" I know that there are many who seek your destruc- 
tion; but while I am alive to protect you, that shall 
never be" 

On the quiet Mount St. Agnes, in the beautiful 
Abbey of Adwerd, or in his own native city of Grro- 
ningen, the great scholar tranquilly passed the re- 
mainder of his days, explaining the Psalms of David 
to groups of listening students, pointing out the 
errors of the Vulgate version, exhorting to a life of 
piety, and sometimes reading aloud a passage from his 
precious Hebrew Bible, which used to make the stolid 
monks wonder at the outlandish sounds. Some of 
his sayings are eminent for their beauty as well as 
their truth. " Your best logic lies in prayer ; for 
the promise is not vain, 6 Ask, and ye shall receive.' " 
" No one lives who does not love ; for lukewarm 
indifference is like a sleep of death. He only wholly 
lives who wholly loves/' " Jesus desires to see in man 
the Divine image restored by Himself; or, in other 
words, truth, purity, and love. In so far as these do 
not live within us, there is night in our bosoms." 
And again : " What can I give to Him who gives 
all to me ? The violet of spring exhales its fragrance 
to the fostering sun. The winged gnat sports in its 
ray. But to Him who is my spiritual Sun, what can 
I give in return ? The only thing I can give is a 
grateful heart. So then, God, I am Thine, and all 
that is within me only exists because Thou hast 
willed it." 

Some disquieting doubts for a moment assailed 
the old man on his deathbed, but faith was soon 
again triumphant ; and to a friend he made the joy- 
ful confession, " Thank Grod, all the vain thoughts 



90 HIS PORTRAIT, 

of which I spake have vanished, and now I know 
nothing but Jesus Christ and Him crucified." On 
the 4th of October, 1489, and in the sixty-ninth or 
seventieth year of his age, John Wessel died. He 
was buried near the high altar in the chapel of the 
nunnery at Groningen, and the register of the 
church received the following entry : " In the year 
of the Lord 1489 died the venerable Master Wessel 
Hermanni (son of Herman), an admirable teacher 
of sacred theology, well versed in the Latin, Greek, 
and Hebrew tongues, acquainted with philosophy 
in all its branches." In 1637 the citizens erected a 
monument to his memory ; and so late as the early 
half of the last century, a magnificent memorial 
was raised, bearing these words : " Ioannis Wesseli 
Gansfortii Tumulus." 

There are several likenesses still in existence 
which set forth the great " Master of Contra- 
dictions " in a thoroughly characteristic guise. The 
features are strong, almost coarse, and yet intellec- 
tual. A cap partially conceals his forehead ; but 
there is that seriousness resting on his brow, and 
that smile playing about the mouth, which made a 
contemporary writer say of John Wessel, " Jam 
gravitas in fronte videri, et risus in ore." When 
Wessel left the world which he had earnestly sought 
to enlighten, Erasmus was twenty-two years of age ; 
Luther a brave little lad of six ; and the Swiss re- 
former a child of five years, running about on the 
elastic turf of the Toggenberg. Thus, as one beacon- 
light after another flames up and dies out upon the 
mountain-tops, the signal is caught up and flung 
onward from height to height, until the fiery 
witnesses have announced to the nations the world's 
great news. 



THE FKIENDSHIPS OF THE 
REFORMATION. 



The friendships of the Reformation form one of its 
noble and beautiful features. If men discovered 
that they felt alike or thought in common upon the 
great dividing topics of the day, they instantly gave 
their hands upon it, and a friendship was vowed 
which was to live through life and survive death. 
Two people in that testing day could not walk a mile 
together unless they were agreed ; and if they 
agreed, they felt a fervour of responsive regard, and 
a joy in fellowship, of which we, amidst the cold 
conventionalities of modern society, can form but a 
shadowy notion. We have seen the strength and 
tenderness of the bond which made Jerome of 
Prague aspire after the mantle of his master when 
he saw the fiery chariot run up the road to heaven. 
We know the fine friendship which united two such 
dissimilarities as a grand and rugged Martin Luther 
and a gentle and refined Philip Melancthon. Other 
lands furnished the like fellowships ; but few nobler 
instances can be found than that chivalrous accord 
which bound together in lasting friendship the 
scholar-knight Ulric von Hutten and Francis von 
Sickengen, the Protestant Bayard of his time. 



92 CASTLE-LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. 

At the old castle of Steckelberg, some leagues 
distant from Fulda, within the confines of the pre- 
sent electoral Hesse, was born, on the 21st of April, 
1488, Ulric von Hiitten, the eldest son of one of the 
noblest families of old Franconia. When people 
talked of a fine old chivalrous nobility, they went to 
Franconia to seek its type; and when they sought 
the individual specimen to represent the class, they 
pointed at the Huttens. For six centuries there had 
always been a bold Hiitten riding at the head of his 
armed following, or else a stately Hiitten sitting 
erect at the council-board. In the paternal castle 
of Steckelberg, the boy Ulric lived until his eleventh 
year, taking the impress of the stormy life around 
him. He himself, in a letter to his friend Wilibald 
Pirkheimer, has described life at one of these feudal 
castles, so familiar to his memory. They were 
bristling strongholds, not bowers of plaisaunce; 
and if the lady of the castle pleased her womanly 
fancy with making her little terrace-garden under 
the shadow of some battlemented tower, she must 
keep a smooth brow if my lord should give the 
pitiless order for the flowers and pot-herbs and the 
little scrubby vines to give place to some new out- 
work, some fresh bastion, ravelin, or fosse. The 
hall, hung round with armour and with the trophies 
of war or chase, received the guests and fed the 
household ; while the dame and her daughters were 
happy if they could secure a little chamber in a 
turret for their embroidery, whence they could look 
down upon the sweep of the dark forest, and drown 
the howlings of the wolves at evening with the lute 
and the ballad-song. If they rode to the chase, 
there must be an armed escort near at hand ; and if 
minded to visit a neighbour in the next castle, 
during some brief lull in the hereditarv feud, the 



"make a clerk of little ulric." 93 

knight and his young esquires must ride at the 
head of the procession in casque and cuirass. 
Such was country life in an aristocratic neigh- 
bourhood — such was*feudal society — in the fifteenth 
century. 

To a boy brought up under these restless influences, 
where war was the normal condition of society, and 
peace the uncongenial exception, the quietude of the 
abbey-life at Fulda, whither he was sent for educa- 
tion, must have been a severe change. He was about 
eleven years of age at this time, the eldest of four 
boys. But though his brethren were of giant growth, 
Ulric was small of stature ; while there was a look of 
delicacy which made his parents say, " Better make 
a clerk of little Ulric ; he will never make a figure 
in the saddle." They hoped the boy would take 
readily to monastic life, and in such case there would 
be a ladder before him which might speedily carry 
him to the top of the abbey, nay, perhaps even higher. 
Ulric eagerly caught the learning which the abbey- 
school could give; he made excellent proficiency 
in the classics; but he detested the vocation., and 
nothing could induce him to assume the tonsure 
and the cowl. Much later in life he summed up 
his observations in these words : " Having seen the 
world, it seems to me that I could live in a manner 
more pleasing to God and more useful to man in 
any other way rather than in the monastic life." 

Fulda, planted beside the river of the same name, 
with its castle, the home of the prince-bishop, and 
its breezes blowing over the spurs of the Harz moun- 
tains, might have proved a pleasant place wherein to 
spend a few years of study when the boy had become 
habituated to its quietude. But Ulric soon perceived 
that his parents had formed a fixed determination 
to make him assume the monastic vows. In this 



94 ALONE ON THE HIGHWAY OF LIFE. 

resolve they were powerfully sustained by my lord 
abbot, who perceived that he had a pupil of un- 
common genius in the pale, slight little youth of 
sixteen, whom he coveted for the church instead of 
the camp ; and so he paraded before his mind all 
the power and pride, the pomps and pelf, to which 
a walk through the cloisters might lead him ; but 
the boy turned away with disgust. In the midst of 
his perplexities he found a friend in his school- 
fellow Crotus Rubianus, and a powerful supporter 
in Eitelwolf von Stein, who had read him aright, 
and who exclaimed indignantly at " the shame of 
killing and burying so fine a genius," Thereupon 
ensued a painful scene between the boy and his 
parents : there were commands from sir knight the 
father, with threats that if the son disobeyed he 
would never see his face again, and from the lady- 
mother there were earnest entreaties and tears. Our 
sympathies are certainly with Ulric in refusing to 
burden himself with vows that went against his con- 
science ; but when, at the next glance, we see that 
the boy of sixteen has fled from the convent, and 
has flung himself alone upon the world, we see that 
he has thrown himself into a position of extreme 
moral peril. On this step the father denounced his 
son, and shook his hands free of him altogether. 
Alone on the highways of life, the young adventurer 
travelled first to Erfurt, where it is probable that 
his acquaintance began with the great Augustine 
monk Martin Luther, who, at the age of twenty, 
had just found on the neglected shelf of a dark 
library that manuscript of the Bible wherein lay 
folded, page after page, the whole future history of 
the Reformation. That acquaintance, if in truth it 
were then commenced, soon became another of those 
" friendships of the Reformation" to which reference 



ce 



ULRIC TURNS TROUBADOUR. 95 

was made at the beginning of this sketch. But 
Ulric soon moved on to Cologne, where his school- 
fellow Crotus Rubianus was now studying, and the 
two youths learned to fence and thrust and parry 
with the jangling weapons of dialectics, — with syl- 
logisms, propositions, and pointless argument, — 
the leading science then taught at Cologne. Hiitten 
soon wearied of this barren scholasticism, and 
turning to the classics, he made great progress 
in the literature of Greece and Eome, a study 
which had been just revived by his master Ragius 
iEsticampius. But this classic teacher was soon 
driven from Cologne by the scholiasts as a dangerous 
innovator and perverter of the good old ways; so 
Master Ragius and his enthusiastic pupil Ulric 
journeyed off together to the new University of 
Brandenburg. Here they made Ulric a Master; 
and Ulric dedicated to them, in return, his first poem 
on the " March of Brandenburg." From 1506 to 
1514 Ulric Hiitten was passing from land to land, 
much after the manner of a troubadour — his harp 
his only wealth. He was perfectly penniless, but 
he paid his way wherever he went with his own 
stirring verses. The poet-knight sat down as an 
honoured guest at the luxurious tables of abbots and 
priors, settling all scores for venison, boar's head, 
and Burgundy, with a brilliant satire or some fine 
national poem. But he found the same acceptance 
beside the hearth of the poor peasant, and at the 
simple table where sat the fair-haired Gretchen 
and her little boys and maidens with their honest 
blue eyes. There was a rousing ballad for them, or 
else a satire glinting keenly at the monks and priests 
which they well knew how to appreciate, before the 
foot-sore Ulric got up and walked on his way. So 
Hans and Gretchen heartily wrung the stranger's 



9b ULRIC BESIEGED. 

hand, and treasured up their little romance of the 
wandering Minne-singer, and how he sat and sang 
beside their log-fire. But the conversation, as well 
as the verses, of a travelled scholar made Ulric 
acceptable to the educated; and the Bishop of 
Olmiitz in particular was so fascinated with his 
guest, that after having entertained him magnifi- 
cently for a considerable time, he presented him 
with the parting gifts of a horse and a purse of 
money. In this errant way Ulric made the tour 
of the north of Europe, and travelled Germany in 
all directions ; though in Pomerania there was an 
exception to his general good entertainment, for 
there the savage folk set upon the poor Minnesanger 
and robbed him of all his little travelling outfit. 
Moreover he nearly suffered shipwreck from the 
waves of the Baltic; so that his course was not 
always triumphant. Other perils awaited him in 
Italy ; for whilst he was sojourning at the University 
of Pavia, the city, then in the possession of the 
French, was besieged by a Swiss force, and he had 
to share in its calamities. Besides this general 
misfortune, he was at the time transacting a minor 
quarrel of his own, and standing a regular siege 
in his student-chamber against a party of French 
soldiers. Here he had given himself over for lost, 
and had provisionally composed his own epitaph in 
very fine Latin verses, when the little siege became 
merged in the wider proportions of the great siege, 
and the city was taken. The stranger-poet was 
maltreated and spoiled, in direct violation of the old 
law of chivalry, that there were " three things which 
might never be taken from a bard — his harp, his 
horse, and his sword." So the poor bard fled to 
Bologna ; and here his necessities became so urgent, 
that the representative of six centuries of nobility 



HIS OPINIONS. 97 

had to take service as a common soldier in the army 
of the Emperor Maximilian. " If I were to tell 
thee all I suffered in Italy," said Ulric afterwards 
to his friend Wilibald Pirkheimer, " thou wouldst 
have a wondrous tragedy, and so sad that thou 
wouldst scarce believe me." At length his old ally 
at Fulda, Eitelwolf von Stein, found him out, and 
obtained for him a protector in Albert of Branden- 
burg, Archbishop of Mayence. 

During the whole of this singular career, it has 
been impossible thus far to discover in Ulric Hutten 
any signs of religious feeling or of true conversion 
of heart and life. He passionately loved liberty, 
hated oppression, detested the arrogance of the 
Romish Church, despised her pretensions, and caught 
with quick ear the underground heavings and mut- 
terings of the coming earthquake. But though all 
his sympathies were on the side of the religious 
emancipation for which he perceived, in his wide 
travels, that many in all grades of society and in all 
lands were panting and praying, yet it was freedom 
from bondage that Ulric Hutten desired rather than 
freedom from sin. The recovery of man's birth- 
right of private judgment, of which he had been 
wrongfully dispossessed, was more to the scholar- 
knight than a pure creed and an open Bible. But, 
after a while, the knightly champion of the Refor- 
mation became influenced in heart and life by its 
purifying doctrines ; and although we know less than 
we desire of his spiritual life, yet that man must 
have been something more than a scholar, a wit, and 
a poet, who could gain and retain the regard of such 
men as Martin Luther, Philip Melancthon, and Ulric 
Zuingle. 

Before Ulric von Hutten enlisted himself in the 
cause of the Reformation, he embarked eagerly in 
a 



98 TWO WARFARES IN HAND. 

two conflicts, each of which had a successful issue. 
One was an appeal to Germany in general, by pen, 
voice, and sword, against the Duke of Wurtemberg, 
on account of some most cruel and heartless wrongs 
done to the Hutten family in the person of Ulric' s 
chivalrous cousin John von Hutten, whom the duke 
had treacherously assassinated with his own hand in a 
forest glade, in midst of the seeming friendship of 
the chase. On this matter, Ulric not only roused 
the whole Hutten clan and reconciled himself with 
his offended father, the old knight of Steckelberg, but 
also called in the powerful aid of the celebrated Franz 
von Sickengen. This was the commencement of the 
strong affection betwixt the two chevaliers which 
lasted for the remainder of their days. In the end 
the wicked Duke of Wurtemberg was put to the ban 
of the empire, and chased from his estates by his 
outraged people. In the other little warfare alluded 
to above, Ulric rendered a distinguished service to 
learning by hurrying, lance in rest, to the aid of the 
famous Reuchlin, whom the scholastic theologians 
of the Universities were bearing to the ground. 
Ulric wrote so powerfully in favour of the great re- 
storer of Hebrew and Greek literature in Germany, 
that the scholiasts were at length silenced ; and 
although Reuchlin was cited to appear before the 
terrible tribunal of the Inquisition by the Inquisitor 
Hochstraten, as a judaising heretic, because forsooth 
he had acquainted himself with many Jews in pur- 
suing his study of Hebrew, yet the agitation was so 
successful that the intended victim was delivered from 
his great peril. It is true that some years later — 
that is, in the year 1520— the Dominicans succeeded 
in obtaining the condemnation of the great scholar, 
the first man in all Germany who had ever owned a 
complete copy of Homer ; the man who had corrected 



REUCHLIN DIES. 99 

the Vulgate by the Hebrew text ; who had published 
the first Hebrew grammar and dictionary which Ger- 
many had seen. But by this time Luther had spoken 
in his own resounding voice, and Hutten had written 
largely with his diamond-pointed pen ; and the noble- 
hearted protector of the persecuted, Franz von Sick- 
engen, had held up his mailed hand and dared the 
Dominicans to touch, much less to burn, his friend. 
Whereupon the astonished Dominicans were fain to 
warm themselves at the great fires which they feci 
with his precious books instead of himself; and just 
as the last sparks of those fires died out, died Reuch- 
lin himself in peace. 

There was one work of Hutten' s which made a 
prodigious sensation in the land. It was a series of 
satirical letters aimed at the monks, and entitled 
" Epistolae obscurorum Virorum/' purporting to be 
written by monks, theologians, jurists, and doctors, 
unveiling with keenest satire the secret history of the 
mendicant orders. Our Sir Thomas More, in writing 
of them to Erasmus with high praise, calls them 
" the letters of the black men." They were the 
"Provincial Letters" of Germany, the i( Junius' s 
Letters " of their age. 

But when Ulric went amongst his own family, 
he found that they utterly despised his calling as a 
man of letters ; they were actually ashamed of their 
brother and kinsman. The pen was held to be a 
most unknightly weapon, literature an ignoble call- 
ing which any low-born citizen or sharp-witted 
peasant might follow with success. It was a sorry 
waste of the noble blood of centuries to be wearing 
an ink-horn and to be bending over a scroll. The 
hounds were baying and the bugle sounding, and 
yet brother Ulric was up in his chamber tuning 
his lyre ; there was a passage of arms to come off', 



100 i€ ULRIC IS STILL NOTHING!- 

or direful vengeance to be wreaked in the matter 
of some old feud whose origin was well-nigh for- 
gotten ; but Ulric — shame on him ! — was busied in 
defending his friends with his pen instead of his 
lance, or in annihilating some venerable error with 
a shower of verses, instead of riding his enemies 
down under his horse's hoofs. " A noble friend of 
the family," said Ulric with a smile one day, — "a 
noble friend demanded from one of my relations ' by 
what title he should salute me.' 6 Alas,' replied he, 
' Ulric is still nothing /' " So fiercely was he beset 
by his relations on the subject of his want of position 
and title, that he at last unwillingly consented to 
return to Italy in order to obtain his doctor's degree. 
When an honest man with a strong love of truth, 
and some knowledge of the distinction between right 
and wrong, went to Rome in that day of papal splen- 
dour, he was almost sure to return a Reformer. It 
was now the Rome of Leo X., that magnificent 
Medicean prince who kept his pagan court in the old 
city of the Caesars ; and who, while he was ever adding 
to the art-treasures of his metropolis, was ever 
undermining the foundations of his Church. To meet 
the enormous charges of this lavish expenditure, 
Christendom had long been mulcted of large sums 
of money, under pretence that they should be applied 
to carry on the " Holy War" against the Moslem; 
but the Holy War never came on, because the funds 
were all drafted oif into other channels. Every- 
thing was sold, from the highest to the lowest eccle- 
siastical dignity. The pallium of the archbishop was 
put up to auction, and the pardon of sin had its 
market-price in coin. And still the son of " Lorenzo 
the Magnificent" sat in the midst of his circle of 
artists and learned infidels, debating upon the means 
of raising his gorgeous pile of St. Peter's. 



ULRIC GETS A TITLE. 101 

Hiitten marked all these things with infinite dis- 
gust. He found that Rome was in very truth that 
great mart of nations whose " merchandise was in 
gold and fine linen and purple, and frankincense 
and wine and oil, and chariots and slaves and souls 
of men" 

But Ulric's was no subdued spirit which could 
" meekly bear with wrong," and return railing with 
blessing. A fatal quarrel with five Frenchmen, who 
injuriously set upon him when he resented their 
insulting language concerning his Kaiser Maximi- 
lian, obliged him to fly from Rome to Bologna ; and 
a national feud at Bologna between the German and 
Italian students forced him to quit Italy without the 
decoration of his degree as doctor. But Kaiser 
Maximilian heard these stories, which were tho- 
roughly congenial to his taste ; and forthwith Hiitten 
received, as a reward for his hot-headed patriotism, 
the " accolade" of a knight, and the sounding title 
of " imperial poet and orator." In April, 1517, the 
laurel crown was placed on his brows by the hand of 
the fair Constance of Peutinger, surnamed u The 
Pearl of Augsburg." So now Ulric von Hiitten had 
a " title;" and henceforth he always wrote himself, 
"poet and orator." We have not searched the civil 
list of Vienna to ascertain if the Laureate of the 
Empire had his cask of Burgundy, or his butt of 
Malmsey, as the perquisite of the tuneful office. He 
was, as has before been stated, a little man ; but his 
countenance was singularly expressive, and his eyes 
used to flash up with sudden illumination. His 
friends loved his face, and found it amiable ; his ene- 
mies were startled by its changing lights. He is 
given in the pictures of the times as a knight armed 
at all points, but with a wreath of laurels round his 
head in true poet fashion, while his hand is in the 



102 "ulric is 6 somebody' after all/' 

act of drawing his sword from the sheath to repre- 
sent his fierce warfare with Rome. His manners 
were gentle and courteous when there was nobody 
to quarrel with about oppression and wrong-doing ; 
and his conversation was a fine blending of graceful 
learning, keen-edged satire, and that species of start- 
ling wit which unexpectedly associates and assimi- 
lates the most remote things. 

When the old knight of Steckelberg and his armed 
sons saw Ulric coming back to the castle with that 
mysterious decoration about his temples other than 
a helmet, and yet a gift imperial, they began to think 
that he must be " somebody" after all. So they let 
him in with a puzzled sort of deference, gave him his 
apartment in the old castle, and marvelled much at 
his doings. For Ulric was not only writing at great 
speed in his chamber, he was actually printing like- 
wise. Gutenberg had died forty-nine years before, 
and his types and presses were rapidly becoming the 
very arsenal of the Reformation. And now Ulric 
and his gnome-like familiars were printing the book 
of Laurentius Valla against that famous donation of 
Constantine to the papacy, wherein, it is pretended, 
he laid vast temporal endowments as a holy gift on 
the altar of St. Peter; and then Ulric, by way of 
flinging down his gage on the very steps of that 
high altar, dedicated his work to Pope Leo X. him- 
self. When Luther read this book of Laurentius 
Valla, edited and dedicated by Hutten, he wrote to 
one of his friends in these terms : " I am so troubled 
about this that I can scarcely doubt any longer that 
the Pope is really Antichrist. Everything agrees ; 
what he does, what he says, and what he legislates." 
Thus did Hutten, the secular champion of the Re- 
formation, help Luther, the great religious leader, to 
arrive at a momentous conviction. 






THREE CANDIDATES FOR EMPIRE. 103 

In 1519, Hiitten was still writing, printing, and 
publishing. He was at once editing Livy, sending 
forth ironical dialogues against the court of Rome, 
and hunting on the dusty shelves of old libraries for 
any forgotten work which would help his cause. In 
the mean time his correspondence included the men 
of letters and the men of action in France, Germany, 
and Italy. It is said that he received more than 2000 
letters from distinguished persons, all of them con- 
gratulating him on having declared war against 
Borne, and entreating him to continue the contest. 
This fact alone proves how wide-spread was the 
sentiment which was now stirring society. Many of 
these letters were from crowned heads, lords, and 
even bishops. Maximilian had died, and a new 
Kaiser must be chosen to fill the imperial throne. 
The electors had met in the Wahlzimmer at Frank- 
fort, and were eagerly debating the merits of the 
three candidates of Empire. Francis I. of France, 
in offering himself, promised to lead western Chris- 
tendom against the Turk. Our Henry VIII. sug- 
gested himself; but the island-king found no favour 
in the eyes of the electors. Charles, heir of Bur- 
gundy and of Flanders, Spain, Naples, and Sicily, 
heir also of the Austrian domains of his grandfather 
the deceased Maximilian, as well as of all that 
western world which floated, vaguely in men's dreams 
somewhere behind the sunset, was the third candi- 
date; and who so fitting to be a second Charlemagne, 
and to wield with strong hand the sceptre of the 
West? So the youth of nineteen was chosen ; and 
in him Europe found she had her master. Men did 
not at first guess what power to rule the world and 
himself lay behind the dignified reserve of the youth- 
ful emperor. " He is pious and silent," said Luther, 
" and I venture to say that he does not speak as 



104 ULRIC RENOUNCES HIS INHERITANCE. 

much in a year as I do in a day/' The hour soon 
came when both piety and silence were thrown aside. 
On the 22nd of October, 1520, Charles was crowned at 
Aix-la-Chapelle. This was the time chosen by Hiitten 
to attack the papacy in a more unrestrained manner 
than ever before, and his chosen device was hence- 
forth " Jacta est alea " (" The die is cast "). 

But Hiitten was conscious that, in thus throwing 
himself into the front of the fight, he was incurring 
great personal peril ; and we now fiud those signs of 
religious feelings, and those evidences that he was 
actuated by a deep sense of duty, which we had 
sought in vain before. The old knight of Steckel- 
berg was dead; but Ulric renounced his inheritance 
as eldest son, left the castle, and determined to 
involve no one in the dangers which he was about 
to encounter. He even desired his family neither to 
write to him nor to send him supplies of money, lest 
their own safety might be in any wise compromised. 
This is true Christian chivalry, as rare as it is noble. 
And yet at this very time he wrote to one of his 
friends : " I have a great desire for repose, and some 
day I must satisfy it." Then followed a commission 
to look out for a fitting help-meet, who should be 
beautiful, virtuous, and well-educated; one with 
whom he might refresh his spirit after labour and 
care : " One with whom he could smile ; " " and as to 
her birth, the lady whom a Hiitten can espouse must 
of necessity be noble." Either the ideal was never 
found, or else the real of life was too stern ; and this 
dream of domestic repose was never fulfilled. 

The " Roman Triad " was the title of the book 
which now produced an immense excitement in Ger- 
many, and great exasperation at Rome. Ulric took 
care not to compromise his old paternal castle by 
printing it in his own press, and therefore Mayence 



i 



A WARM-HEARTED LETTER. 105 

was made the centre of the explosion. About this 
time, the bonds of amity were more closely drawn 
betwixt Luther and Hiitten. A warm-hearted letter 
from " Ulric von Hiitten, chevalier, to Martin 
Luther, theologian," shows the cordial understanding 
which already existed. "If thou encounterest diffi- 
culties in the grand things which thou dost undertake 
with so intrepid a courage, be assured that I am with 
thee, heart and soul. I am not idle myself. May 
Christ be with us ! may He aid us ! and then we 
shall be able to restore His divine laws — thou with a 
larger share of success, I according to my powers. . . . 
They say that thou art excommunicated. How much, 
Luther, does this ennoble thee ! But take good care 
of thyself. If thou wert now to perish, thou must 
thyself know how great would be the public calamity. 
As to thyself, stand firm and falter not in the path 
which thou hast entered. In every struggle I will 
be thy second. The Lord is with us ; who shall be 
against us ? I am now going to pay a visit to Fer- 
dinand. Sickengen engages thee to come to him if 
thou art not safe where thou art. He will protect 
thee against every foe." This letter is known to 
have been highly encouraging to Luther's mind. 
Hiitten' s visit to young Ferdinand, who was visiting 
his brother Charles V. in Brabant, was deeply disap- 
pointing to his hopes. The Emperor, with the heavy 
pile of crowns just heaped upon his youthful brows, 
was visiting his new empire ; and various indications 
had led Ulric to believe that he was about to coun- 
tenance the innovators. Franz von Sickengen, 
although completely compromised by his open friend- 
ship with the Reformers, was nevertheless in high 
consideration at court ; but Charles was only endea- 
vouring to steal the heart of the man who represented 
the chivalry of Germany in its ancient type, who was 



106 THE INQUISITOR FRIGHTENED. 

its Arminius or its Siegfried. Hutten had scarcely 
reached Brabant when some hidden friends glided 
up to his ear and whispered that the Roman legate 
had posted assassins in different spots, with secret 
orders to reach his life, either with Italy's favourite 
stab or by the more subtle approach of poison. But 
Hutten shook his head unbelievingly, and lingered 
on at court. Yet wherever he went, he caught the 
tones of some friendly voice entreating him to disap- 
pear without delay. It were madness to set at 
naught these repeated warnings ; and so, at last, 
with all speed he returned to Mayence. As he 
quitted Brussels, he encountered the Inquisitor 
Hochstraten, just outside the city. The man had a 
guilty conscience, for to him had Charles intrusted 
the office of bringing the troublesome knight to trial. 
As soon as he espied his intended victim, he fell upon 
his knees and commended his soul to the care of the 
saints in heaven. " No," said Ulric Hutten, " I 
will not soil my weapon with thy life;" and giving 
the Inquisitor two or three hearty strokes with the 
flat of his sword, he bade him go on his way un- 
harmed. But it was high time for the knight to 
leave Brussels, and at Mayence his appearance was 
celebrated as the sudden respite of a doomed man ; 
for he was not long in making the discovery that the 
Pope had sent missives round to the different princes 
requiring them to seize the dangerous poet and send 
him prisoner to Rome. The legate had been per- 
sonally practising upon Charles to have Hutten put 
to the ban of the empire, and to command that the 
papal agents should possess themselves of him when- 
ever or wherever they could find him. These were 
very sifting news for the friends of Ulric Hutten. 
The chaff was instantly blown away, the good grain 
remained. But this was the moment chosen by the 



THE CASTLE OF EBERNBURG. 107 

noble von Sickengen to seize the deserted knight by 
the hand, and to lead him with all honour into his 
own old castle of Ebernburg. 

Just where the Alsenz and the Nahe join their 
waters, about twenty miles from Mayence, the ruins 
of the old castle of Ebernburg may still be found. 
In the early half of the 16th century, the stronghold 
was inaccessible to force or foe ; and to friend like- 
wise, unless, indeed, the courteous lord were minded 
to wave a welcome. And here the hunted Ulric, 
against whom Eome was hounding on her emissaries, 
could turn at bay. He could do more, he could 
instantly assume the offensive on his pursuers ; for 
Sickengen, when he led him up the steep ascent, 
said courteously to his brother-in-arms, " and send 
for thy printing-press, my Ulric." That stern old 
castle on the height soon became another Wartburg; 
for within its walls several of the most distinguished 
leaders of the Reformation found sanctuary — Me- 
lancthon, (Ecolampadius, Martin Bucer, Schwebel. 
and Aquila. During his stay in the castle of Ebern- 
burg, Hutten led his martial host into the study of 
the Gospel doctrine, explaining Scripture to him in 
his own half-scholarly, half-soldierlike way. Sicken- 
gen was impressed and delighted with the vista of 
truth thus opened before his mind. " Is there any 
man," cried Knight Franz, " that dare try to over- 
turn such a doctrine ? Who dare attempt it ? " 
(Ecolampadius acted as chaplain to the singularly 
assorted household during his stay at the Schloss. 
He used to preach to all comers every morning. But 
the warriors did not wholly relish the doctrines of 
love, peace, gentleness, and forgiveness of wrong ; 
and so, though they presented themselves every day 
at chapel, they generally came only just in time for 
the benediction, or at most for a short prayer. 



108 

" Alas, the Word is here sown upon rocks ! " said 
the disappointed preacher. From the castle of 
Ebernburg, Ulric addressed a letter to Charles V., 
in which he denounced the insult done to the im- 
perial dignity by the demand of the Pope, to be 
allowed to carry off to Rome in chains a knight of 
the German empire, a member of that great body of 
which Charles was the head. He concluded with 
these words : " Judge thou my cause. What has a 
German knight to do with the Bishop of Rome ? " 
His stately host transmitted this protest to Charles , 
and Charles promised that Ulric should not be 
delivered up untried. Sickengen wrote in these 
noble words to Luther, who was in a condition of 
extreme harassment : " My services, my possessions, 
and my person, in short, everything I have, are at 
your disposal. You are resolved to stand up for the 
truth of the Gospel ; I am ready to lend my aid for 
the work." There is always something peculiarly 
grand in the attitude in which this remarkable man 
stands in the front of his age ; " The rare flower of 
German knighthood," as Philip Melancthon calls 
him, in the enthusiasm of gratitude. Hiitten, also, 
wrote about this time to his honoured friend Martin 
Luther, in his own fierce impulsive style : " We 
want swords, bows, javelins, and bombs, in order to 
repel the fury of the devil." " You see what 
Hutten wants," said Luther to Spalatin ; " but I am 
averse to strive for the Gospel by violence and blood- 
shed. By the Word of God was the world subdued, 
by that Word has the Church been preserved, and 
by that Word shall it also be repaired." Hutten 
perceived the difference betwixt himself and Luther, 
betwixt the men and their means : " My thoughts," 
he says, " are running on earthly aims ; while you, 
contemning such things, are devoted to the things 



" I HAVE DARED IT." 109 

of God alone." And then came thundering from 
the turrets of the Ebernburg a " Complaint against 
the excessive and Antichristian power of the Pope, 
and against the irreligious religious, written in verse, 
by Ulric von Hutten, poet and orator, for the good 
of all Christendom, and specially of his country 
Germany. Jacta est alea" The sale of this stormy 
poem was immense. It was so cheap that the 
poorest German peasant or most struggling artisan 
spared his little coin for its purchase ; and its argu- 
ment was so transparent, that even heads enveloped 
by the mists of beer, smoke, and dreamy speculation 
awoke at the shrill clang of its numbers. Month 
after month Hutten was at work in his Ebernburg 
tower, sending out edition after edition of his 
u Complaint;" and still learned and unlearned asked 
for more. It was written, not in Latin, — which had 
hitherto been the cultured speech in which the 
scholar-poet spoke to his scholarly hearers, — but in 
the tongue in which the burgher talked to his 
comely wife, and the vine-dresser or the shoemaker 
sang his song at evening to the little lad on his 
knee. " Now^ I invoke my country in its national 
tongue," said IJlric ; and he wrote after his well- 
known cognizance {Jacta est alea), " Ich habs ge- 
rcagt ! " (" I have dared it ! ") More than a hundred 
years after, in the middle of the 17th century, the 
printing-presses of Germany were still striking off 
editions of Ulric Hutten's " Plaint." 

This year, the year 1520, was an " annus mira- 
bilis " for the Fatherland : Charles V. received the 
crown of empire at Aix-la-Chapelle ; Luther pub- 
lished his " Babylonish Captivity," and burned the 
Pope's Bull and the decretals in the public square 
of Wittemberg ; and Ulric von Hutten went straight 
to the heart of the people by saying to them bold 



HO THE CITATION TO WORMS. 

things and true in the language of common life, 
love, and home. In addition to the famous " Plaint," 
he also brought out many of his highly dramatic 
dialogues, with a loving dedication "to the noble 
Franz von Sickengen, my well-beloved friend, my 
consoler ; " and then follows a beautiful, eloquent, 
and touching description of all that Franz had been 
to him in his hours of need. The closing words of 
this dedication are peculiarly characteristic of the 
two friends : " I offer thee, then, for thy new year, 
my little books, which I have translated into Ger- 
man in this Hotel of Justice (the castle of Ebern- 
burg) ; and I desire for thee not, as in common 
style, an agreeable repose, but great, serious, noble, 
and laborious affairs, in which thou mayst employ, 
for the good of men, thy heroic heart. May God 
give thee happiness and health. Written at Ebern- 
burg, on the eve of the new year, 31st of Decem- 
ber, 1520." 

The "new year," 1521, is memorable as the 
date of that great crisis in the history of the Refor- 
mation when Martin Luther was cited to appear 
before the Diet of Worms. The citation and safe- 
conduct were signed by Charles on the 6th of 
March, and on the 16th of April the intrepid Re- 
former was already at Worms. The friendship 
between Luther and Hiitten had grown increas- 
ingly cordial and confidential. Letters were con- 
stantly passing between Wittemberg and Ebern- 
burg, the knight addressing the monk as his " dear 
brother and friend, the invincible herald of the 
Word of God, Martin Luther;" and in this corre- 
spondence the friends intrusted each other with 
their hopes, fears, plans, and conflicts ; while Ulric 
with pleasure tells Martin how his beloved host 
Franz enjoyed their evening readings "in thy 



A PLOT. Ill 

books or in mine." But when the great news 
reached the valley of the Waters'-meet and the hold 
of Ebernburg that the Saxon monk was summoned 
to Worms and had obeyed the bidding, Ulric wrote 
to him on the 17th of April, in the beautiful and 
reassuring words of the Psalm, " The Lord hear 
thee in the day of trouble, the name of the God 
of Jacob defend thee: send thee help from the 
sanctuary, and strengthen thee out of Zion ; grant 
thee according to thy own heart, and fulfil all thy 
counsel. beloved Luther, my venerated father, 
fear not, but stand firm. Fight valiantly the battle 
of Christ. For my part, I too will fight boldly. 
The Lord will deliver his vine, which the wild 
boar of the forest has laid waste. Christ preserve 
thee!" 

A curious incident occurred in the course of 
Luther's journey to Worms. A neat little scheme 
had been laid by the papal party to intercept the 
Eeformer on his way, and the honourable knight 
Franz von Sickengen was to be the unsuspecting 
instrument of the wrong. If they could but allure 
Luther aside into his friend's stronghold, and pre- 
tend that the Emperor was disposed to send learned 
theologians there to debate with him concerning 
the points in dispute, it would be easy to prolong 
the discussion until the safe-conduct should expire. 
Martin Bucer, a young Dominican monk, who had 
taken sanctuary in this " abode of the righteous," 
as it was called, was entirely imposed upon by 
the subtle representations of the papal party ; and 
the knight Franz von Sickengen himself, without 
suspicion, as he was "without fear and without 
reproach," was induced to come into the plot. 
" The invitation to Doctor Martin Luther must 
come from you," said the papal agents to Sicken- 



112 

gen, "and Martin Bucer must be the bearer of 
it." So out pricked a troop of the Sickengen 
horse, with a fair sprinkling of knights, and with 
Bucer at their head. Luther had already reached 
Oppenheim, on the left bank of the Rhine ; in three 
days his safe-conduct would be waste paper, and 
any one might lay hands on him. First there was 
an exchange of kindly words between the Domi- 
nican and Augustine monks. They knew each 
other well, for they had held long conferences at 
Heidelberg some time before, which had resulted 
in the whole-hearted conversion of Bucer to the 
Gospel cause. " Franz von Sickengen greets thee 
by me/' said the disciple; "these are his horse, 
and he sends me to lead thee to Ebernburg. Kaiser 
Charles's confessor desires a conference with thee. 
Come to Ebernburg." The great Reformer thought 
for a moment, and then spake out with his w r onted 
decision : "I shall go on ; and if the Kaiser's con- 
fessor have aught to say to me, he will find me at 
Worms. I repair to the place of summons." 

The plot had failed ; and monk and knights 
rode back again to the disappointed and deluded 
host of the Ebernburg. Then followed that grand 
chapter, perhaps the grandest in Church history, 
when Luther stood before the Diet of Worms, and 
spoke that word of power, " May God be my 
helper! for I can retract nothing." But when he 
was waylaid b v masked horsemen on his homeward 
route through the dark forest-paths,* and for ten 
months a worn and lonely man on the Wartburg, 
bending over the Ms. of the Bible, and render- 
ing it into the tongue of the peasant, was the 

* The Elector, Frederic the Wise, Luther's noble protector, 
caused him to be intercepted on his return from Worms, and carried 
to a place of safe concealment. 



BAYARD AND SICKENGEN MEET. 113 

representative of the past and the sealed hope of the 
future, the scattered ranks of the Eeformers fell 
into the confusion consequent on the disappearance 
of their intrepid leader. Hiitten wrote dialogues 
and showered the printed copies from his chamber 
in the " abode of the righteous." But Glapio, the 
Emperor's soft-voiced confessor, was again at 
Ebernburg, tampering with the brave and honest 
soul of Franz von Sickengen. He was never a 
match for a priest ; and he was again imposed upon 
by the artful plans which were skilfully mapped out 
before him. And so he lent himself, in his 
honourable simplicity, to work out the imperial 
schemes. Presently Sickengen is found at the head 
of 3000 horse and 12,000 foot, his own levy, 
marching into France under the Count of Nassau, 
to attack Francis I. At the siege of Mezieres, the 
two heroes of chivalry, the Chevalier Bayard of 
France and Franz von Sickengen, the representative 
noble of Germany, found themselves face to face. 
French chivalry was victorious, and Sickengen re- 
turned home wounded in reputation and in purse. 
The Emperor declined to refund the enormous outlay 
of the 3000 horse and the 12,000 foot, because 
victory had not gilded their arms. Sickengen had 
been betrayed into the service of the wrong master, 
and had found it as unjust as it was hard and 
exacting. Confusion followed on confusion, mistake 
on mistake. Hiitten and his host, having lost the 
hoped-for aid of the Emperor against the Court of 
Rome, appealed to the Rhenish knights to form a 
league of offence and defence. The rendezvous was 
at Landau; and at this knightly concourse Franz 
von Sickengen was chosen for their leader, and 
Hiitten' s printing-press worked harder than ever in 
order to raise the people. But there was a want of 

H 



114 THE LEAGUER POSPERS NOT. 

responsive sympathy between peasants and nobles, 
and again between the sober burghers and those 
stately men who walked with so proud a step along 
the common road of life. There was a want of 
cohesion amongst such discordant materials, and the 
league did not prosper. It had been well for the 
brethren-in-arms had they recalled the words of 
Luther before quoted : " I am averse to strive for 
the Gospel by violence and bloodshed," &c. Luther 
was drawing from its scabbard a sharper sword than 
the brother-knights could wield, with all the force 
of their mailed hands, when he was interpreting the 
Hebrew and Greek Scriptures to a waiting people 
in his dreary vigils on the Wartburg. When he 
learnt that Sickengen and his fellows were seeking 
to unite the cause of Reform with the revival of the 
feudal power of the nobility, he declined to associate 
himself with their project. Ulric Hiitten's personal 
views would have taken a more popular form ; but 
he nevertheless leagued himself with his benefactor 
and with the knightly brotherhood of Landau. 
War was declared first on the belligerent Archbishop 
of Treves. But some of the princes of the empire, 
the Count Palatine and the Elector of Hesse, came 
to the aid of the beleaguered Treves and its mitred 
head ; so Sickengen was compelled to retire. One 
after another, in rapid succession, the strongholds 
of the league fell before the forces of the princes. 
The hero was wholly in a false position; but he 
carried himself with intrepid bravery to the end. 
He had taken for his cognizance, " The will of the 
Lord be done ; " and he prepared himself to endure 
the consequences of his own mistakes in his own 
chivalrous way. His words, when he marched 
against the archbishop, had been these : — " For 
Christ and his Gospel I brave death; " but he was 



8ICKENGEN WOUNDED AND DYING. 115 

now resolved to involve as few as possible in his 
own perilous circumstances, and he sent away 
Hiitten and (Ecolampadius from his side because he 
was persuaded that their genius was needed by the 
great cause for which they were all struggling, each 
in his several way. And then he shut himself up, 
not in Ebernburg, the beloved sanctuary of the 
oppressed and home of the hunted, but in Landstuhl, 
an old castle-residence of his ancestors, overhanging 
the town of the same name. In the olden time the 
lords of the house of Sickengen had been able, with 
a well-filled storehouse, to hold out against the hot 
anger or the sullen patience of any foe that came 
against them. But all things were now changed ; 
it was in vain to invoke the expired traditions of the 
past. Feudalism had lived out its day ; war had 
wholly changed its tactics ; cannon-balls were 
now bounding against the crumbling defences of 
Landstuhl, bringing swift messages of coming 
doom. A face of wall fell upon the noble Franz 
himself, and he knew that he must soon not only 
capitulate, but die. He asked that he might be 
suffered to die at least free ; but the princes refused 
to grant this boon. " I shall not long be their 
prisoner," said the wounded knight; and he sur- 
rendered at discretion. His hand had scarce power 
to sign the capitulation ; and then the princes of 
the empire marched within the pile of ruins. 
Under the arch of a vault, sole relic of the fine old 
fortress, lay the dying man. He stretched out his 
failing hand to the Palatine. " Franz, why didst 
thou attack me and my poor flock? " said the war- 
like Archbishop of Treves. " Leave me in quiet ; 
for I have to render my account to a more powerful 
lord than ye," was the calm reply. " Wilt thou 
confess ? asked the chaplain. " I have confessed 



116 ULRIC TURNS TO ERASMUS. 

myself to God/' replied the knight ; and then the 
chaplain pronounced the prayers for a parting soul r 
and elevated the host. Down fell the princes on 
their knees, uncovering their heads the while ; but 
Franz von Sickengen was gone. The princes said a 
" pater " for good of his soul ; and then they buried, 
in the church in the town beneath the fortress of 
Landstuhl, the man whom many of his countrymen 
maintained was fitted to wear the elective diadem 
of Imperial Germany, — this representative of the 
old chivalry, this hero of an earlier age who had 
lived on into times with which he had but little in 
common. " The Lord is just and wonderful ! " ex- 
claimed Luther, when he heard of the death of the 
magnanimous and heroic Franz von Sickengen ; 
"it is not by the sword that He will propagate 
his Gospel." 

Hiitten and (Ecolampadius, when they parted 
from their generous protector, at whose table they 
had so long feasted as honoured guests, journeyed 
into Switzerland. Hard times were come upon them, 
and they were in sore straits — homeless exiles, 
without country and without means of support. It 
was a chivalrous act of Francis I. to offer, at such 
a moment as this, a pension of 400 crowns to the 
poet-knight, together with the free selection of a 
place of residence. But Hiitten's ideas of freedom 
and patriotism were too uncompromising to admit of 
his accepting the boon. Francis would doubtless 
have exacted Gallic tunes from the German lyre. 
Hiitten proceeded to Basle ; and here he immediately 
found himself to be an object of sympathy and respect 
from almost the whole population of the city. En- 
couraged by the abounding signs of kindly feeling 
which met him on every side, he turned to his old 
correspondent Erasmus, But the great wit and 




The Flower of German Chivalry. 



Seepage 116. 



ALONE ON THE ROAD AGAIN. 117 

scholar had a self-preserving horror of being com- 
promised ; his door was barred against his exiled 
friend ; and from the half-opened lattice of selfish 
stipulation he whispered, " Don't come here, unless 
it be absolutely essential to see me." This was a 
chilling colloquy to one accustomed to the lofty 
generosity of a Sickengen. Erasmus endeavoured 
to excuse his heartlessness, when addressing Philip 
Melancthon after Hiitten's death, by pretending that 
the wandering song-bird " was only seeking a nest 
to die in." But this language only the more firmly 
affixes the charge of cowardly selfishness on the in- 
hospitable roof-tree of the greatest scholar of his 
age. 

It was not probable that the Eomish Bishop of 
Basle (any more than Erasmus) would calmly per- 
mit the poor bard to lodge under the eaves of his 
fine old cathedral ; and the Bishop was soon prac- 
tising upon the Senate to have the stranger driven 
forth from sanctuary. So the Senate recommended 
the exile to leave their city, "in consideration of the 
public peace and thy own safety," as they apolo- 
getically stated. And then Ulric von Hiitten was 
again alone upon the rough road of life. At what 
hostelry should he next try to find a bench whereon 
to sit down and rest ? He was at this time only 
thirty-five years of age ; but he was way-worn and 
weary ; a foot-sore pilgrim, panting for repose. 
Perhaps that old vision of a quiet home, and the 
" somebody to smile with," floated before him and 
dimmed his eyes, as he stumbled along over the 
sharp stones of exile, a proscribed man. And yet 
there was enough freshness left in the well-head of 
poesy within him to have flowed forth in stirring 
song, sufficient to flood with melody any homestead 
which might afford him shelter, sufficient to thrill a 



118 TO ZURICH NEXT. 

whole city or rouse a whole nation. It would not 
now be a ballad, as of old ; it would be a hymn 
about the new hope, full of immortality. But the 
spirit was well-nigh broken, for the body had well- 
nigh failed. Thus quietly walked the poet-knight 
into Mulhausen. The moment of arrival was oppor- 
tune, nay providential. There was a great stir in the 
place. Magistrates and burghers were in deep talk ; 
and the subject-matter was the open establishment 
of the Reformation. It is easy to imagine with what 
new life and old power the war-worn soldier would 
rush into the thick of the conflict. The old flame 
flared up, and Ulric von Hutten was himself again. 
Everything went on to his heart's contentment ; 
and on the 12th of March, 1523, there was a great 
solemnity to celebrate the banishment of the papal 
power from the good town of Mulhausen. 

Here, as at Basle, Ulric found himself to be the 
leading object of interest and deference amongst 
the earnest-hearted population, and he was once 
more almost happy. There is nothing like the 
softening oil of respectful sympathy for smoothing 
out the lines and cross-lines of grief. So there was 
rest for a while, but only for a while ; for the 
priests forced a reactionary movement in Mul- 
hausen, and Hutten was once more driven out upon 
the road. To Zurich next ; to Zurich and to Zuingle. 
Zuingle wrote to their mutual friend Wilibald 
Pirkheimer announcing the arrival of Hutten, in 
these singular words : " Is this your terrible Hutten, 
that destroyer, that conqueror? this man, who 
subdues himself with such sweetness, towards his 
friends, towards children, and even towards the 
humblest of men ? How can one credit that lips 
so amiable have blown such a tempest ?" His 
strength was now rapidly sinking. Zuingle, per- 



BROKEN, BUT NEVER BENT. 1 19 

ceiving his weakness, sent him to the little island 
of Uffnau, because in that isle of the Lake Zurich 
there dwelt a curate who had the reputation of being 
well skilled in the healing art, and where a poor 
shepherd, John Schnepp by name, waited on him 
with humble assiduity. But it was too late ; and 
here, on the 29th of August, 1524, died Ulric von 
Hiitten, at the early age of thirty-six. They buried 
him in Uffnau, where he had laid himself down to 
rest for the last time ; and the monumental shadows 
of the Alps, as they touch the small isle at the end 
of Zurich lake, alone mark the place of the hero's 
sleep. 

A short time before his death, he had written 
to his friend Eoban Hess, " I have hope that God 
will yet one day unite together the friends of the 
truth, now dispersed throughout the world ;" and 
Eoban Hess, when he heard of his death, wrote of 
Ulric von Hiitten, " Never was there a greater foe 
to the wicked, never a better friend to the good." 

Thus, under the crumbling arch of the castle of 
Landstuhl, and here in the little verdant isle of 
Uffnau, dropped two of the most polished links, 
broken because never bent, of the long chain which 
held together the friendships of the ."Reformation. 



THE ARTISTS OF THE 
REFORMATION. 



" The Evangelist of Art," Albrecht Diirer, was 
born in 1471 ; " The Painter of the Reformation/' 
Lucas Cranach, in 1472. But Albert took pre- 
cedence of Lucas in the primogeniture of genius 
as well as by seniority of time ; and if Lucas were 
the faithful portrait-painter and skilled engraver 
of the Reformation-century, Albrecht, painter, en- 
graver, sculptor, poet, mathematician, and en- 
gineer, belongs to all succeeding time as one of art's 
great teachers. He realises, in the history of his 
mind and of his works, the quaint old proverb of 
his native city, 

" Niirnberg's Hand 
Geht durch all' Land'." 

( " Nuremberg's hand 

Goes through every land.") 

The ancestors of Albert Diirer were Hungarian 
country-folk; but the grandfather had left his 
cattle and his fields, and had become a prosperous 
goldsmith at Wardein. His son Albrecht, father 
of the great artist, followed the same calling, and 
migrated to Nuremberg, then the most wealthy 
and powerful of all the free imperial cities of Ger- 



ALBERT ON HIS ART-TRAVELS. 121 

many, Ine mart of the Levant, and the great north- 
ern storehouse of Italian commerce. He married 
the daughter of a Nuremberg goldsmith, Barbara 
Haller, and settled in the Winkler-strasse, where 
were born eighteen children, one of whom was the 
famed Albert. The goldsmith wished to bring up 
the boy Albert to his own craft ; but the faculty of 
designing soon developed itself so remarkably, that 
he was allowed to follow his own taste; and so 
Martin Hapse gave him his first lessons in design 
and in engraving, and then for three years he 
studied under Michael Wolgemuth, an old Nurem- 
berg artist, born in 1434, a representative of the 
hard ungracious manner which prevailed before 
the time of his great pupil. Buonmartino also 
gave Albert some instruction in engraving; but 
the youth was at the same time studying geometry, 
architecture, and sculpture. 

The apprenticeship finished, at the age of twenty- 
one, Albert set forth on his art-travels. He 
was now a nobly-grown young man, with long hair 
waving about his shoulders; a grand specimen of 
the German artist. Life had not yet cut his fine 
features after that type of grief which they after- 
wards assumed. The whole world of art lay open 
before him; the strong instincts of undeveloped 
genius were stirring within; shadowy forms of 
ideal excellence, now shaped by the quaint conven- 
tionalities of the times, now taking the semblance 
of a new futurity of power, were beckoning him 
this way and that. He saw the Gothic mannerism 
of the received models, and he determined to reform 
art by following the teachings of nature. He was 
painting portraits as he moved about from city to 
hamlet; but there was no very high standard of 
refinement to be formed from the positive counte- 



122 HE GIVES HIS HAND TO A FURY. 

nance of the burgher or the complacent passivity of 
his good frau — from the patient face of the peasant, 
coarsened by weather and want, or from his way- 
worn and woe-worn helpmeet — from the indolent 
self-indulgence that dozed under the monk's cowl, 
or the stormy passions that wrought on the brow 
of the soldier. Times were hard and hardening; 
life was involved and difficult ; self-preservation and 
self-defence made every man a law unto himself; 
and the gentler graces of life had hidden themselves 
out of sight until better days should come. A 
great enlightenment was at hand ; but for the present 
the rising day was struggling with the forces of the 
night. 

Flanders was visited ; and the young artist per- 
ambulated a large part of Germany, and even the 
Venetian States, before he returned to work in his 
native city in 1494. The picture by which he now 
obtained his mastership appears to have been his 
" Orpheus ; " and in this sense it may be called his 
masterpiece — his exhibition-work, by which he 
gained his diploma. The candidate was required to 
exhibit some leading picture by which a measure- 
ment of his powers could be taken ; and if it stood 
the test of criticism from the professors of the art, 
he was admitted to exercise the rights of a master. 
Three more years were passed in seclusion and in 
deep study, before, at the age of twenty-six, he ex- 
hibited the "Three Graces," with a globe above 
their heads, bearing the date 1497. But in the 
mean time the poor artist had given his hand to one 
of the Furies rather than Graces, in the person of 
the ill-tempered Agnes Frey ; and the date of that 
unhappy union was henceforth found graven on the 
whole world of his artistic life. If his domestic 
unhappiness had not become matter of history, it is 



the artist's home. 123 

said that his designs would have revealed the secret : 
for if he drew the allegorical " Jealousy," with an 
arm cruel in its supernatural strength, the face 
is the face of Agnes Frey; if he represented 
" Melancholy," a most forbidding personage, all 
his acquaintances recognised the large but hand- 
some features, the ungraceful figure, and the gloomy 
character of Agnes Frey. Thus the domestic model 
is perpetually presenting itself on the shady side 
of his subject. The unhappiness of his home would 
seem to have given a depth of expression to his 
representations of sorrow and of suffering, and a 
sombre view of life altogether, which are as touch- 
ing as they are powerful; and there is a grandeur 
in his glooms which is as full of pathos as of dignity. 
The wife, who was the daughter of a burgomaster of 
Nuremberg, brought him, in addition to her sus- 
picious and avaricious disposition, a sufficient num- 
ber of gulden to enable him to buy a house. That 
dwelling still stands. It is in the old half of the 
city, where the houses, capped with high red-bricked 
roofs, cluster around the beautiful Gothic church of 
St. Sebald. The house is at the foot of the Berg- 
strasse, near the Zissel-gate. The imperial Schloss 
towers on its steep rock above, dating in part from 
the beginning of the eleventh century, and old as 
Queen Cunigunde's linden-tree that still sheds its 
autumnal leaves in the castle-yard. The artist's 
home is quaint and square, with the same high- 
springing roof as its neighbours', and with those 
little gasping windows, low and mouth-like, up 
amidst the tiles, which enable the . unhappy garrets 
to breathe a little portion of the air of life. The 
house is built of wood interspersed with masonry, 
something in the half-timbered style of many of our 
Cheshire houses. Numbers of windows mark the 



124 THE WORRYING WIFE. 

stories ; but the glass lodge, in which it is said that 
Albert Diirer composed the greater number of his 
masterpieces, has disappeared. It sprang out from 
the side of the house like a bow-window, and was 
what the Germans call an " ecke," a corner, a nook. 
There the clear light of day used to shine in upon 
the sombre imaginings of this great genius, illu- 
minating his wonderful etchings and dancing on the 
fine point of his burine. 

" Here, when art was still religion, with a single reverent heart, 
Lived and laboured Albrecht Diirer, the evangelist of art. 
Hence in silence and in sorrow, toiling still with busy hand, 
Like an emigrant he wandered, seeking for the Better Land." 

Longfellow. 

Agnes had her menage on the second story of the 
house ; and a funnel, it is said, enabled her to com- 
municate her worrying commands and rebukes to 
her husband when, in his little crystal palace of art, 
he was following the track of some luminous thought 
as it passed, ray-like, across his clouded sky. But 
often her heavy step was heard on the dark stairs as 
she came to besiege him in his fortress; and she 
used so mercilessly to press him to toil in order to 
make more money, that there was scarce time left 
even for his meals. Albert's sleeping-chamber is 
on the story where Agnes carried on the close mys- 
teries of her parsimonious house-keeping ; it is a low 
room, where you can scarcely stand upright, with a 
doorway likewise so low, that genius must have bent 
its crest every time it passed the threshold. The 
house has been purchased by the city, and set apart 
for the assemblies of the Society of Arts, and for 
permanent exhibitions. An artist is the fitting 
tenant; and he receives the visitor and shows him 
all over the place. The name of the great master 
has been given to the street in which he " lived, 



KAISER MAX HEARS OF ALBERT. J 25 

loved, suffered, and finished his course." The in- 
scription runs thus : — 

" In this house Diirer created his works, 
And here art opened for him the heaven of joy ; 
And ever higher rose he with new power and strength. 
He lived, loved, suffered, and finished here his course. " 

In the house in the Winkler- strasse in which 
Albert Diirer was born, had been born a few months 
before him the well-known scholar, statesman, and 
art-patron, Wilibald Pirkheimer. The children 
played together, and made their little boyish friend- 
ship over the fortifications which Albert laid out like 
a young Vauban ; while Wilibald thrilled him with 
classic stories about Rome and her world-wide vic- 
tories. This friendship grew as the boys shot up to 
man's stature, and lasted until they went down to 
the grave, almost hand in hand; for Wilibald sur- 
vived his friend but two years. 

The first works of Albert Diirer drew on him so 
much attention, that soon the news that Germany 
had found a great artist of her own reached the 
ears of Kaiser Maximilian. Maximilian I. was an 
enthusiast in literature and art. Brave, but impul- 
sive, and hence inconstant, he was continually per- 
forming fine actions which made him the favourite 
hero of his people, but which were never sustained 
in a continuous course founded on principle. Yet 
the independence of his opinions in various lines has 
caused him to be counted amidst those who helped 
to clear the ground for the coming Reformation; 
and so little reverence had he for the Papacy, that 
at one time he had thoughts of stretching out his 
hand and laying hold of the tiara itself. Sometimes 
he was called " Father of his people," sometimes 
" Wise-king ;" while Melchior Pfinzing, the poet, 
gives him the name of " Teuerdank," from his ro- 



126 ALBERT DRAWS BEFORE KAISER MAX. 

mantic passion for adventure (" Abenteuer denkt," 
one who thinks upon adventure). There is a quaint 
old picture by Hans Scheuffelin, representing Sir 
Teuerdank with great intrepidity slaying a huge bear, 
which had evidently been a dangerous character in 
the neighbourhood, a cross by the wayside marking 
the spot where some lonely traveller had been de- 
voured. Kaiser Max sent for the young Nuremberg 
artist, and commanded him to draw on the wall 
before him. Many hands would have shaken ; and, 
perhaps, few but those of a Giotto or a Durer could 
have made the circle of the famous "0" perfect 
under such nervous circumstances.* As Albert stood 
and drew before the Emperor, it was found that he 
could not reach high enough to finish off his figures 
satisfactorily ; and so Maximilian desired a courtier in 
his suite to lend him his lordly shoulders as a scaf- 
folding, so as to place him on a level with his as- 
piring thought. The courtier bowed his neck with 
muttered indignation, and lifted up the young 
painter into the higher regions of art. " I can make 
a noble out of a peasant any day," said Kaiser Max ; 
"but I cannot make an Albrecht Durer out of a 
fool." And soon after came a patent of nobility for 
the artist, with a coat-of-arms in keeping, and a 
considerable pension. Imperial favour did not cease 
after Maximilian had been laid under the altar in 
the old ducal Schloss of Neustadt, with his trusty 
servant Dietrichstein at his feet ; for his grandson 
Charles V., and Charles's brother Ferdinand of 
Hungary, found in the Nuremberg artist the man 
whom they delighted to honour. 

* Albert Durer, on another occasion, is said to have taken a piece 
of charcoal from the fireplace, and to have described with it a circle as 
perfect as that celebrated one of Giotto which procured for him the 
engagement under the Pope, and which gave to the Italians their 
proverb, " round as the ' O' of Giotto." 



AN ARTISTIC FRAUD. 127 

Albert is, in process of time, again found at 
Venice. The cause of this second journey into north 
Italy seems to have been an artistic fraud which 
had been made on him by Marc Antonio Franci.* 
Albert Diirer had designed and cut in wood a series 
of illustrations of the life of Christ. They were 
highly prized for their expression and force, and 
Franci had reproduced them by imitating them on 
copper, and had then sold them as genuine Diirers. 
The master, indignant at the fraud, set out for 
Venice, where he pleaded his cause before the senate; 
but the only satisfaction he could obtain was a de- 
cree forbidding the culprit henceforth to forge Albert's 
well-known monogram, the enwoven A. D. The 
injured artist lingered for nine months in the beau- 
tiful city of the sea, which preserves the large 
wooden block on which he cut a bird's-eye view of 
the city, its palaces, churches, and canals, leaving on 
it his own signature in ciphers. It was fitting that 
a Nuremberg artist should take the portrait of the 
fair Queen of the Adriatic, for the prosperity of the 
two cities closely linked them together. When 
Venice ruled almost the whole traffic with the East, 
Nuremberg was one of her chief northern market- 
places, and they fed together on the world's fatness; 
until Vasco de Gama doubled the Cape of Torments 
("Cabo dos Tormentos"), and had justified King 
John of Portugal's sanguine prediction that it would 
prove a "Cabo de Boa Esperan9a" ("Cape of 
Good Hope"). But that which promised riches to 
the western world was ruin to the fair lady that 
sits upon the seas in waiting for argosies that now 
never came to her wave-washed footstool; and, 

* Not the well-known Francia, who died of jealousy when 
Raphael's " St. Cecilia" was brought to Bologna for the church of 
San Giovanni del Monte. 



128 ALBERT MAKES FRIENDSHIP WITH RAPHAEL. 

moreover, it brought blight to the grand old city of 
Franconia : so that the lady Venetia is now fain to 
solace her idle hours with stringing beads for Eu- 
rope, while Nuremberg patiently makes its toys. 

In Bologna, Albrecht Diirer made acquaintance 
with Raphael, and an artistic friendship immediately 
sprang up between them. Raphael was twelve 
years younger than his Nuremberg friend ; but his 
brief course was over eight years earlier. The 
northern master sent a portrait of himself as a 
present to the matchless son of the south. It was a 
remarkable production on canvas, and wholly with- 
out colour, only heightened with white and strongly 
deepened with shadows. Yet the rugged strength 
of the drawing was so tempered by taste and skill, 
that the great Italian expressed his astonishment 
at the sight ; and soon there came from Italy in re- 
turn the graceful head of Raphael, beautiful as the 
light of genius overflowing the features from its 
lucent fountain within could make it. It is fine to 
see the great men of different countries thus notify- 
ing their existence to each other, offering the respect- 
ful salutation of mind to mind, and exchanging 
transcripts of those features by which genius was to 
be henceforth known as it walked abroad in the 
world. Albert also sent a collection of his prints to 
Raphael, and Raphael in return sent Albert a number 
of his exquisite drawings. One of these drawings, 
which is to be found in the collection of the Arch- 
duke Charles at Vienna, is a life-study of two figures 
in red chalks. It bears this note in Albert's own 
handwriting : — ^ 1815 : Raphael of Urbino, who has 
been so highly esteemed by the Pope, drew these 
figures and sent them to Albrecht Diirer in Nurn- 
berg, to show him his hand" Fuseli remarks upon 
this interchange of art-tokens that Raphael, " by 



ALBERTS PORTRAITS. 129 

transmitting this specimen of his hand to Albert, 
intended to make him sensible of the difference be- 
tween imitating nature and dryly copying a model, 
and so impress him with the necessity of contrasting 
his outline according to the different texture of the 
parts in the figures before him." But so admirable 
were German Durer's prints, that Vasari says, when 
they were brought into Italy, they powerfully sti- 
mulated the southern artists to aim at the same 
perfection ; so that the Nuremberg woodcuts became 
the model of Italian painters. 

If the portrait of Raphael, when it travelled north- 
ward, awoke the admiration of the Germans by its 
impersonation of refined and ideal beauty, the head 
of the melancholy German might well move the 
Italian mind by its expression of power and its depth 
of thought. There is a sad sweetness in most of the 
likenesses of Albert Diirer which have lived down to 
our own day, that is touchingly biographical in its 
meaning. He looks as if he had taken refuge from 
his household trials in a sorrowful mysticism ; a 
habit of melancholy reverie, which sometimes puts 
on the aspect of a mournful wildness. There is an 
extraordinary blending of force and of gentleness in 
the expression of the whole countenance, which 
Rauch has most successfully caught in his grand 
bronze statue of the artist, and which Overbeck has 
also fixed in his composition representing the great 
masters of Christian art. The long chestnut hair 
falls in wavy curls down to his shoulders, giving an 
expression more poetical than strong. But whenever 
the face is given in profile, firmness and earnestness 
take the lead. To his long fine hair he is said to 
have been much attached ; it is lovingly painted in 
almost all his portraits of himself ; and this little piece 
of personal vanity pointed many of the jests which 



130 RAUCHS STATUE OF ALBERT. 

are still on record. Rauch's statue is eleven feet 
high above its pedestal. It was modelled at Berlin, 
but cast in Albert's own Nuremberg in 1839, and 
inaugurated in the following year. Rauch has given 
the artist the richly-furred robe in which he generally 
chose to present himself in the almost numberless 
likenesses which he has left ; and the hair, as usual, 
falls in long waving tresses. This fine figure stands 
at the foot of the Berg-strasse, not far from Albert 
Durer' s house. One of his self-drawn portraits is a 
chalk sketch taken of his own youthful face when 
he was little more than thirteen, and bearing this in- 
scription : — " Here have I counterfeited myself before 
a mirror, 1484, when I was yet a child. Albrecht 
Durer." In that interesting room in the Uffizj at 
Florence, where are gathered together such numbers 
of artists' portraits painted by their own hand, is 
Albert's of the year 1498, when he was twenty-seven 
years old. He is at a window, and leans with his 
hands on the window-sill. The hair falls in the 
usual favoured curls, much in the manner so familiar 
to us in Leonardo da Vinci's paintings. The dress 
is a gala costume, and a brown cloak hangs from the 
shoulder. Kugler remarks on the expression of the 
countenance that it " is honest and homely, with a 
certain naive self-complacency." In the next por- 
trait, only two years later, he is already profoundly 
thoughtful, earnest, and serious, if not sad. He was 
fond of introducing himself in the very heart of his 
pictures ; sometimes in the most intrusive positions. 
Ten thousand saints are undergoing martyrdom; 
and there is Albert in the very midst of the scene, 
with his inseparable friend Wilibald Pirkheimer at 
his side, both of them in mourning garb, and watch- 
ing the painful progress of events. A little flag in 
the hand of the artist tells that " Albert Durer 



HE ESCAPES TO THE LOW COUNTRIES. 131 

made this in the year of our Lord 1508." Again, 
in the famed "Assumption of the Virgin" painted 
for Jacob Heller of Frankfort, Albert is the centre 
of the scene, leaning on a tablet which preserves the 
date and his name. In another very daring picture 
of most solemn groupings, Albert, in a rich furred 
cloak, appears beneath a host of the blessed, a calm 
spectator of the wonders and the glories of the mo- 
ment. A stone at his feet records that "Albertus 
Durer, Noricus, faciebat, 1511." 

In the year 1521 he again visited the Low 
Countries. It is said that his leading motive in 
undertaking this journey was to escape for a season 
from the grinding tyranny of the Frau Agnes. It 
is sorrowful to think that he should have been 
driven to such means of securing repose. He 
could work better when out of reach of the scold- 
ing-funnel, or of the heavy step of the besieging 
force on the dark stair of his retreat ; and it is 
noticeable that his several absences from home were 
more fruitful in great works than any other portions 
of his life ; though there is an expression of suffering 
in the greater portion of these productions which, 
taken biographically, is sufficiently touching and 
saddening. He was now acknowledged to be the 
greatest painter on the northern side of the Alps, 
and wherever he moved he found himself to be a 
man of note. The masters of the northern schools, 
who loved the rude, the hard, and the real, and the 
graceful artists of the south, who worshipped the 
ideal, and who painted after the beautiful models 
which Italian life supplied or which Grecian art had 
bequeathed, alike recognised in Albert Durer the 
unmistakable features of true genius. It is true 
that at one time he complains to his firm friend 
Pirkheimer, " the Venetian painters abuse my style, 



132 LUCAS OF LEYDEN AND JAN MALUSE. 

and say that it is not after the antique, and therefore 
that it is not good ; " but after a while even the 
fastidious southerns acknowledged his grandeur and 
his force, even where they looked in vain for grace 
and refinement. This visit to Holland in 1521 
brought him acquainted with some remarkable con- 
temporaries ; and there is one particular dinner- 
party on record at which Lucas van Leyden was his 
splendid host. The entry in Albert's journal simply 
states, " I was invited to dinner by Master Lucas, 
who engraves in copper ; he is a little man, and is 
a native of Leyden." The " little man " was at this 
very time making a tour of Holland in princely 
style, carrying Jan Mabuse with him, and yachting 
in and out along the watery highways of Zealand, 
Brabant, and Flanders, in a sloop fitted up after his 
own luxurious mind. The two painters were as 
magnificently attired as their little ship; and as 
they floated along the canals, Lucas of Leyden 
probably caught those fine effects of aerial perspec- 
tive which live still in his works. The principles 
of perspective were then almost unknown in 
northern Europe ; and young Lucas van Leyden 
was his own master as he glided along the sluggish 
canals. But though he tried to proportion the force 
of his fine colouring to his different degrees of dis- 
tance, yet he failed to adapt the height of his objects 
to their proper place in the scenery. The gifted 
u little man " had also been a precocious little boy ; 
he was already famous when he was nine years old, 
eagerly painting at night as well as by day ; and by 
the time he had reached his twelfth year, the child 
had achieved for himself a reputation as an engraver 
as well as a painter. When he carried his picture, 
in distemper, of Saint Hubert to a citizen of Leyden, 
little Lucas's eyes danced as the burgher counter 1 



THE PAPER COURT-DRESS. 133 

out twelve gold pieces, one for every year lie had 
lived. And then the gold, instead of coming down 
upon him drop by drop, fell in a thick shower ; and 
by the time he was twenty-six, he was out on his 
water-tour, in his own pleasure-sloop, banqueting 
his brother-artists wherever he could call them 
together — at Antwerp, or Ghent, or Mechlin, or 
Middelburg. The pensive Nuremberg genius must 
have been an inharmonious guest at the wild revels 
of Lucas van Ley den and Jan Mabuse in the Ant- 
werp feast. Such a wildly wasteful career as that 
of Lucas could not last long; and he died in his 
thirty-ninth year. Jan Mabuse's name was so well 
and widely known that Albert Diirer travelled to 
Middelburg expressly to see his altar-piece, the 
Descent from the Cross, which he closely studied 
and strongly praised. Jan painted family portraits 
at the court of our Henry VIL, and he studied art 
in the schools of Italy ; but though he drew with a 
good pencil and bestowed a most elaborate finish 
and an enamel-like polish on his works, he was 
hard, dry, angular, and laboured in detail, like 
most of the Van-Eyck school. He was miserably 
dissipated and extravagant in his habits; and on 
one occasion, when he was to appear before his 
Imperial Majesty Charles V. in a rich brocade which 
had been sent him for the occasion, he bartered his 
court-dress at a tavern for drink. How, then, was 
he to present himself before the Emperor ? The 
resource was a characteristic one ; he had a paper 
suit made for the levee, and then with his cunning 
brush and his brilliant palette he painted it into the 
likeness of so gorgeous a brocade, that the keen- 
eyed Kaiser, who had caught a hint of the device, 
would not credit the story until he had felt and 
crumpled the paper with his own royal hands. 



134ALBERT GIVES HIS HEART TO THE REFORMATION. 

When Albert Durer returned to Nuremberg, he 
found that the new opinions in religion had filled 
the heads of the people, the new doctrines their 
hearts. The city was pervaded with Protestantism. 
It is known that the great artist not only accepted 
these enlightened views with his understanding, but 
that he laid the Bible to his heart and lived upon its 
truths. D'Aubigne saj r s : "Albert Durer was one 
of those who were attracted by the word of truth ; 
and from that time a new impulse was given to his 
genius. His masterpieces were produced subse- 
quently to conversion. It might have been discerned, 
from the style in which he thenceforth depicted the 
evangelists and apostles, that the Bible had been 
restored to the people, and that the painter derived 
thence a depth, power, life, and dignity which he 
never would have found within himself." In support 
of this view, we know that he painted the portraits of 
many of the most conspicuous Eeformers with won- 
derful expression and earnestness. He painted 
Philip Melancthon, Frederic the Wise, Wilibald 
Pirkheimer, &c. ; and the doughty cavalier, in the 
extraordinary wood-engraving called the " Knight 
of Death," is said to be the likeness of Franz von 
Sickengen. In this famous work the mounted hero 
rides through the dark shadows of a valley, above 
which towers his ancestral castle — no doubt the 
Ebernburg, where so many of the persecuted found 
so serene a refuge that they called the lofty nest of 
their chivalrous host " the abode of the righteous." 
There, besides Ulric Hutten and Melancthon and 
Bucer and OEcolampadius enumerated in " The 
Friendships of the Reformation," Luther himself 
reposed for a while ; and in the library of Nurem- 
berg is treasured the black velvet cap which he wore 
when he sat down to rest on the height of Ebern- 



ALBERT'S " APOSTLES*" 135 

burg, like Christian in the arbour, in the midst of 
his climb up the Hill of Difficulty. In Albert's 
design of the knight, Death and the infernal princi- 
palities and powers are doing their worst to terrify 
or to allure him from following his steadfast course; 
but all undismayed the knight moves on. It is a 
work of marvellous power. Albert also painted 
Erasmus, from whose enlightenment of intellect he 
had conceived great hopes : but his career disap- 
pointed the world by offering an exact contrast to 
that which Albert sought to immortalise in his grand 
" Knight of Death;" he was not found faithful. 
The life-long intimacy with Pirkheimer, who was 
also the close friend and constant correspondent of 
Ulric von Hiitten, would of itself surround Albert 
Diirer with the very atmosphere of the reformed 
opinions. Kugler says, in his Handbook of the His- 
tory of Painting, that " Diirer's mind had imbibed the 
new doctrine with the deepest devotion." Two years 
before his death, viz. in the year 1526, he painted 
two corresponding pictures of four of the apostles, 
John and Peter, Mark and Paul. The figures are 
life-size, and this, which Kugler calls Albert's 
grandest work, and the last of importance executed 
by him, is now in the Munich Gallery. " We know 
with certainty," he goes on to say, — and his remarks 
are so pointed that we venture to extract the passage, 
— " that it was presented by Diirer himself to the 
Council of his native city, in remembrance of his 
career as an artist, and at the same time as convey- 
ing to his fellow-citizens an earnest and lasting 
exhortation suited to that stormy period. In the 
17th century, however, the pictures were allowed to 
pass into the hands of the Elector Maximilian I. of 
Bavaria. The inscriptions, selected by Diirer him- 
self, might have given offence to a Catholic prince, 



136 THE FIRST PROTESTANT WORK OF ART. 

and were therefore cut off and joined to the admira- 
ble copies by Vischer, which were to indemnify the 
city of Nuremberg for the loss of the originals ; these 
copies are still in the castle of Nuremberg. These 
pictures are the fruit of the deepest thought which 
then stirred the mind of Diirer, and are executed 
with overpowering force. Finished as they are, they 
form the first complete work of art produced by Pro- 
testantisin. As the inscriptions, taken from the 
Gospels and Epistles of the apostles, contain press- 
ing warnings not to swerve from the word of God, 
nor to believe in the doctrines of false prophets, so 
the figures themselves represent the steadfast and 
faithful guardians of that holy Scripture which they 
bear in their hands." 

For the rest, there is a depth of pathos in his 
rendering of the sorrows and sufferings of the Sa- 
viour, which shows how entirely he had been pos- 
sessed by the sense of the great work of redemption 
thereby wrought out for man. At Venice there is 
an " Ecce Homo," before which few can stop without 
being moved, some even to tears. The British 
Museum is enriched by thirty-five of the original 
wood-blocks cut by Albert Diirer, representing the 
passion of the Saviour — the " smaller Passion," as 
they are technically called. From these casts have 
been taken, and metal-type copies. They form a 
wonderful series, giving the solemn procession of 
events with extraordinary force, variety, and pathos. 
They are rude, strong, and often painfully harrow- 
ing ; but the figure of the Redeemer is almost always 
characterised by dignity and grace, in strong con- 
trast with the hardness and frequent brutality of the 
other personages in the groups. Albert had evidently 
stirred the very depths of his soul in search of these 
illustrations of Gospel story. He is always earnest, 



Albert's leading characteristics. 137 

even where to our minds he is quaint and coarse ; in 
good faith, even where he symbolises ; while his 
minute elaboration of details, and perfection of 
painstaking finish, show him to have been as con- 
scientious as an artist as he was profound in thought 
and passionate in feeling. His inventive faculty 
was singularly fertile ; and nowhere has he so freely 
indulged it as when he was cutting in wood. His 
composition was also extraordinary for his age and 
country ; though he sometimes crowds his groups 
in a rather perplexing manner. The proportions 
which he chose for his figures certainly gave them 
the effect of more than ordinary length; they are 
generally men and women of marvellously tall sta- 
ture, while their unusual muscular development 
gives the expression of great strength ; but they are 
anatomically correct, if his standard of height be 
taken as the true one. He evidently gloried in con- 
quering the difficulties, and almost the impossi- 
bilities, of attitude. Strength, grandeur, action, 
and force of expression, rather than refinement or 
grace, are the great characteristics of Albert Durer. 
The colouring of his early pictures was too florid 
and positive : but he managed his colours with much 
more sobriety as he advanced in life ; and he acknow- 
ledges, in writing to Melancthou, that when he 
looked at some of his youthful paintings, he used to 
" groan" over them. His drapery is apt to be heavy, 
though broad and sometimes grand ; his costumes 
often historically incorrect. As an engraver, he is 
worthily esteemed to be the very first of his age ; 
and some of his heads on copper are matchless for 
the delicacy of their finish as well as for the force of 
their expression. Yasari says of him, " If this dili- 
gent, industrious, universal man had been a painter 
of Tuscany, and if he could have studied as we have 



13b HIS DEATH AND BURIAL. 

done in Rome, lie would certainly have been the best 
painter of our country, as he was the most celebrated 
that Germany ever had." Succeeding generations 
of critics and schools of art, owning the sublimity of 
his thoughts, the vividness of his imagination, the 
boldness of his drawing, and yet the marvellous 
minuteness of his finish, acknowledge in Albert 
Durer the greatest of German masters. He is em- 
phatically the painter of expression ; and in drawing 
character or representing passion, his pencil is as 
delicate and his touch as fine as his conceptions are 
bold, his outlines strong, and his compositions grand. 
The senate of Nuremberg gave the painter a 
strong mark of its admiration of his power and 
character by making him a member of the council. 
He was treated with deference and consideration; 
and his noble figure (for he was accounted one of 
the best made men of his times), his gentle and 
gracious manners, and his pleasing conversation 
secured friends and made no enemies. But the 
domestic grievance continued to weigh heavily upon 
his highly sensitive nature. He needed repose, and 
at home he had none ; he craved sympathy, and he 
found it not. His was a character that asked for 
encouragement and for the tenderness of affection ; 
but instead of these there were worry, parsimony, 
the sharp spur of the tongue goading him to cease- 
less toil, and the humiliation to his dignified nature 
at the sight of perpetual meannesses. His health, 
which had long been worn by this friction, at length 
gave way ; his Xantippe literally worried him out 
of his life ; and at the age of fifty-seven, on the 6th 
of April, 1528, died Albrecht Durer. The senate of 
his native city decreed him a public funeral, and he 
was buried in that remarkable gathering-place, 
about a mile outside the Thiergarten Gate, the 



THE PAINTER'S BIRTH-PLACE. J 39 

cemetery of St. John, where lie the patricians of 
Nuremberg, its aristocracy of intellect and art, its 
meister-singers, its cobbler-poet, sculptors, en- 
gravers, and painters : 

" Emigravit is the inscription on the tombstone where he lies ; 
Dead he is not, but departed, for the artist never dies. 
Fairer seems the ancient city, and the sunshine seems more fair, 
That he once has trod its pavement, that he once has breathed iU 
air." Longfellow. 

LUCAS CRANACH. 

At the village of Cranach, in the diocese of 
Bamberg, was born in 1472 "The Painter of the 
Reformation." His name was Lucas Sunder; but 
when the youth stepped out into notice, and men 
began to inquire whence he came, the place of his 
birth gave him his distinguishing name, after the 
custom of the times, and " Lucas Mahler,'' or 
" Luke the Painter," settled down into Lucas 
Cranach. The scenery which surrounded the birth- 
place of the boy was sufficiently varied to bring 
him acquainted with picturesque effects. The old 
city of Bamberg was near at hand, with its Byzan- 
tine Dom-kirche, dating from 1004, and its quaint 
and grand old tomb of the second Kaiser Henry 
and his Kunigunda, some twenty years later in 
date. Then there was St. Michael's Mount, with 
its Benedictine monastery ; and there was the old 
palace of the prince-bishops ; while the picturesque 
town-hall was then running up its steep roofs and 
letting in the daylight through innumerable little 
windows, close to one of the seven bridges that 
span the river Regnitz, whose movements are as 
fantastically irregular as the architecture that em- 
broiders its borders. The pleasant slopes of the 
neighbouring hills are patterned by nature's still 
richer embroidery, in vineyards and hop-gardens 



140 MKE ON PILGRIMAGE. 

and orchard wealth. It was a favouring region 
for a young artist to be born and bred in. How- 
ever, Lucas Cranach soon showed that portrait- 
painting was his especial mission ; and in 1495, 
when he was only twenty-three years of age, be 
was appointed court-painter to the Elector of 
Saxony, Frederic the Wise, the illustrious friend of 
the Reformation. This appointment took him to 
Wittemberg, and at Wittemberg he spent the 
larger half of a long life as court-painter to three 
electoral patrons in succession — Frederic the Wise, 
John the Steadfast, and John Frederic the Mag- 
nanimous. But in 1493, two years before he re- 
ceived his official appointment, he had attended 
Frederic the Wise to Palestine. The Elector went 
on pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre, like many 
another great man of the West ; and being minded 
to have his tour illustrated by drawings of the most 
memorable scenes in the Holy Land, he selected 
young Luke the Painter as the artist of the expe- 
dition. The travelling portfolio of the youth of 
twenty-one must have displayed sketches of no 
common ability, as may be inferred from the pro- 
motion at court which followed soon after his home- 
return. Then came a large court order; portraits 
of ancestors in long array were to be painted. But 
how far back into the mists of the past Luke the 
Painter w T as to grope in search of shadowy sitters 
before his easel deponent sayeth not ; or whether 
he summoned up old Wittekind, the supposed an- 
cestor of the reigning house — Wittekind, who was 
great in Saxony until vanquished by the greater 
Charlemagne. The artist, however, was enjoined 
to take especial heed how he painted Catharine of 
Henneberg, who had brought such fair lands as 
her dower when she wedded Frederic the Strong; 



THE SUPINES OF WITTEMBERG. 



141 



and thereupon Frederic the Wise condescended to 
pun upon the lady-ancestor's name, because of that 
golden "egg" in the Saxon nest. It was truly 
an illustrious house for any court-painter to por- 
tray. In the early half of that same 15th century, 
Frederic the Brave had not only founded the 
Leipzig University, but was also the founder of 
two illustrious branches, the Ernestine and the 
Albertine ; the latter still represented by the reign- 
ing line of Saxony, the former and eldest in our 
own royal house. 

In consequence of his official appointment, Lucas 
took up his abode, as has been stated, at Wittem- 
berg, where honours from his master's hand were 
showered upon him, and where he owned houses and 
gathered wealth in abundance. In 1508, Frederic 
the Wise decorated him with a coat-of-arms — a 
crowned and winged serpent on a gold ground — 
preserved by the medal which was struck in his 
honour after his death. Cranach's own house in 
Wittemberg is still shown amongst the many shrines 
famed in Reformation story — Luther's apartment in 
the Augustine monastery ; the house of Melancthon ; 
the Schloss-kirche where, undivided in death as 
in life, they both lie ; and in the same home of 
Christian heroes, the tombs of the Wise Frederic 
and the Steadfast John, their monuments wrought 
by the fine chisels of old Peter Vischer and his sons, 
every corner teeming with memories of the heroic 
past, every street peopled with the silent generations 
of history. In the Stadt-kirche, from whose pulpit 
Luther denounced and Melancthon persuaded, is an 
altar-piece glowing as if fresh from the pencil of 
Lucas Cranach. In the centre of this painting, 
which is esteemed one of the best works of the Wit- 
temberg artist, is represented the Last Supper, in 



142 FREDERIC THE WISE. 

which the disciples are grouped about a round table. 
On the right wing there is the portrait of the 
" beloved apostle" of the Reformation, the gentle 
and loving Philip Melancthon, who is administering 
the rite of baptism ; and on the left wing there is 
Bugenhagen, who seems to be listening to the con- 
fession of a repentant sinner, and waving off an 
impenitent one ; while in another place there is 
Luther himself delivering from a pulpit the great 
message to an eager audience. Kugler says of this 
painting, " Next to the apostles of Diirer, which it 
by no means equals in execution, it must be regarded 
as one of the most profound and significant of those 
works of art which sprang from the new creed." 

Frederic the Wise, the defender of Luther, and 
calm protector of the reformed faith, died in 1526. 
Sober, thoughtful, and dignified, he was no pas- 
sionate partisan of the Reformation ; and yet to him 
more than to any other man, excepting the great 
Reformers themselves, is attributable its successful 
establishment. Standing nobly in front of the per- 
secuted, his language was like that of Gamaliel in 
the council : — " And now I say unto you, refrain 
from these men and let them alone: for if this 
counsel or this work be of men, it will come to 
naught ; but if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow 
it; lest haply ye be found even to fight against 
God." The man who had courage to refuse the 
glittering offer of the imperial diadem when unani- 
mously pressed upon his acceptance, had also courage 
enough to stand by the weak and to protect the 
powerless ; the man who had selected Martin Luther 
to teach, first philosophy, and then theology, at 
Wittemberg, who encouraged him in his opposition 
to Tetzel, and who protected him against Cajetan, 
had sufficient intrepidity to seize the excommuni- 



LUKE AT A BRIDAL. 143 

cated monk on his return from the Diet of Worms, 
and to conceal him for safety's sake on the dreary- 
height of the Wartburg. It was nothing to him 
that the imperial edict forbade any prince to harbour 
or protect the spiritual outlaw, and required all to 
concur in seizing his person as soon as the term of 
his safe-conduct should expire. But when Frederic 
the Wise was dead, and his brother John, surnamed 
the Constant or the Steadfast, had succeeded him 
in the Electorate of Saxony, the passive yet very 
real protection to the reformed doctrines became 
active assistance in their promulgation. And Lucas 
Cranach, now a thorough Protestant, was still the 
court-painter of Saxony. 

On the 13th of June, 1525, the artist was present 
as one of the witnesses at an important wedding : 
the bridegroom was the emancipated monk Martin 
Luther ; the bride, the escaped nun Katharine von 
Bora. Bugenhagen, the town preacher of Wittem- 
berg, bound the newly unfettered hands in fresh and 
holy bonds ; and graven on the inner surface of 
the wedding-ring were the words, in old German, 
" What God doth join no man shall part." Apell 
the lawyer was present to give legal significance 
to the act; and afterwards the Reformer Justus 
Jonas joined the uncowled monk, the unveiled nun, 
the notary who held God's law in preference to 
man's law, the minister who stood by the credo of 
the Bible rather than the dogma of the Church, 
and Lucas the bold painter of the Reformation, 
at the wedding-feast in Reichenbach's house, where 
Katharine had been residing. It is said that Lucas 
had been the main instrument in bringing about 
this extraordinary marriage. 

In another important matter Luke the Painter 
took the lead, for he was one of two partners who 



144 luke's printing-press. 

set up the first printing-press that had been seen in 
the city of Wittemberg. This was no trifling con- 
tribution to the general enlightenment, no small step 
on the path of progress. In 1533 Lucas was raised 
to the dignity of burgomaster ; but, prosperous 
man though he was, he was still most industriously 
following his calling. His portraits were held in 
great esteem, though he was very fantastic in the 
arrangement of his groups, often strangely and un- 
pleasingly grotesque. He was fond of repeating 
the subject of Christ blessing children ; and in one 
arrangement of this scene (which is at Frankfort), 
he paints the strongly-developed countenances of 
Luther and his Katharine as little children receiving 
the blessing from their Lord. In another scene, 
Albert of Brandenburg, Elector of Mayence, is 
painted as St. Jerome in the wilderness ; but he is 
nevertheless robed in full cardinal's costume, and 
around him troop all manner of beasts of the desert, 
who seem to be speculating with deep interest upon 
the startling apparition. In the great altar-piece 
in the city church at Weimar, John the Baptist is 
in company with Martin Luther and Lucas Cranach 
himself, who are standing beside the cross ; while 
on the wings are the family of Lucas Cranach's 
third patron, John Frederic the Magnanimous. 
Cranach's brush was perpetually painting his be- 
loved friend Luther; but of the likeness just men- 
tioned, Kugler says that "it is a master-work of 
the first rank." The execution of this picture is 
most laborious and exact. Careful labour is the 
distinguishing characteristic of most of his works, 
while in the higher qualities of graceful composition, 
unity of design, lofty expression, and refinement of 
treatment, he was almost wholly deficient His are 
but coarse renderings of common life. He never 



luke's strong protestantism. 145 

,ises into the ideal, though he disports himself in 
the fantastic and the whimsical, as in one of his 
Holy Families, where there is a complete garland 
of little angels dancing hand in hand with infinite 
agility around the group ; whereas in the tree above 
the Virgin's head two others, with much more of 
the boy nature than the angelic, are robbing a bird's 
nest, the old birds vehemently protesting against the 
cruel wrong. His paintings of animals are held to 
have been excellent, and were so life-like as to create 
real deception. There is a remarkable prayer-book 
in the court-library at Munich which is enriched 
with borders by the joint hands of Albert Diirerand 
Lucas Cranach. The latter has etched numbers of 
animals with his pen in most whimsical guise round 
the margins. Cranach's colouring was fresh, fine, 
and energetic. But his standard of physical beauty 
was of a low order — short faces,, red hair, frightful 
hands, and clumsy feet ; very truthful and wonder- 
fully exact delineations of ungainly models. It was 
in portraits that his strength chiefly lay, and here 
he has been invaluable in preserving the strong 
individuality of many of the heroes of Protestantism. 
His principles, as well as his friendships, were un- 
mistakably Protestant; and Waagen remarks that 
his pictures, especially the altar-pieces, " furnish, 
without doubt, the most detailed and the most suc- 
cessful example of a series of symbols and emblems 
connected with Protestantism, such as Cranach 
worked out with the aid of his friends Luther and 

Melancthon Our redemption from original 

sin by the blood of Christ is the fundamental idea 
of the whole, and Lucas Cranach may be properly 
considered as the Church painter of the Reforma- 
tion." Luther held some of Lucas Cranach's drawings 
to be such important aids to progressive enlighten- 

K 



146 LUTHER AT HOME. 

ment, that, with his own strong, well-pointed pen, 
he wrote inscriptions beneath them which added 
vastly to their effect on the minds of the people. 
The ex-monk and the artist were intimate in their 
friendship, and Lucas used often to bring his easel 
and his colours into Martin's dwelling, in order 
that he might study the great man's countenance 
when reflecting the serene calm of the home-life. 
The strong lines of character which it wore when 
the great Reformer was setting his brow like a flint 
against the errors of the day, or when, with every 
nerve strained, he wrestled manfully with princi- 
palities and powers, relaxed in the presence of the 
children and of " his empress Katie," and became 
smooth, gentle, playful. He was at such times 
enjoying the complete repose of domestic life, the 
undress of home ; and there, within the closed doors 
of family retirement, the storms of the outer world 
were scarcely heard or heeded. If Martin were so far 
worn by the day's troubles as to be proof against her 
own simple talk, or Lucas Cranach's bright sallies 
and brighter colours, " Empress Katie " would se- 
cretly send out for Justus Jonas, whose converse 
had always power to cheer ; or, better still, for the 
beloved Philip Melancthon, whose sympathy was as 
tender as a woman's, while his faith was as true as 
a martyr's. Sometimes she would repeat to her 
husband passages from the Scriptures, which, in her 
simple woman's wisdom, struck her as suited to his 
case, and Martin would exclaim that " he would not 
exchange her for the kingdom of France or the 
wealth of Venice." 

When Cranach symbolises a great religious truth, 
he rises into a much higher region of art than he 
commonly occupies ; as in one particular altar-piece, 
where the brazen serpent and the offering of Isaao 



luke's three noble masters. 147 

are made to bear a spiritual reference to the sacri- 
fice of the Eedeemer on the cross. Kugler remarks 
that the sacrifice of Isaac is " a very grand compo- 
sition, much more so than is common with Cranach's 
works.'' 

Two of Lucas Cranach's sons inherited their 
father's artistic taste ; the eldest, Johann, went to 
Italy to study, but died young, while he was sur- 
rounded by the masters and models of the Bolognese 
school. Another son, well known as Lucas Oranach 
the Younger, lived to be an old man and a success- 
ful painter, his father's best scholar, and an inhe- 
ritor of his civic dignity as burgomaster of Nurem- 
berg. The father and son used sometimes to touch 
the same picture, and sometimes each tried his hand 
on the same sitter ; for instance, they both painted 
the portrait of Katharine von Bora, Luther's wife. 
One of Luke the son's designs is thoroughly allego- 
rical in its meaning : the Bomish clergy are seen 
eagerly devastating the vineyard of the Lord ; one 
half of it they succeed in destroying, but the other 
half of the scene shows the leaders of the Befor- 
mation successfully cultivating the fruitful ground. 

Of all his three noble masters, Frederic the 
Wise, John the Steadfast, and John Frederic the 
Magnanimous, Lucas Cranach was most bound in 
heart to the last. When the court-painter was 
seventy-five years old, very great disasters fell upon 
the land. Happily, Luther had slept away in peace 
in his own house, on his own bed, with his Katha- 
rine and his children, and with Philip Melancthon 
beside his pillow, on the 18th of February of the pre- 
vious year, 1546, sixty-three years old. He had 
again and again expressed his desire that " the Lord 
would come and unharness him" " There is One 
who takes care of me in his own manner better than 



148 THE a STAR OF AUSTRIA." 

you and all the angels could ever do ; He sits by the 
side of the Almighty Father/' were his words to his 
wife a few days before his death. He had reminded 
the weepers that " God was able to raise up new 
Doctor Martins by dozens ; " but it was no wonder 
that, when the great news of his death reached Trent, 
the Council rose up with one accord to chant a Te 
Deum for exceeding joy. To return from this side- 
glance at Luther's deathbed. 

Charles V., freed of his only royal rival by the 
death of the adventurous but inconstant Francis L 
of France, determined to attack the Elector of 
Saxony while he was detached from the rest of the 
confederate princes. It was the year 1547. The 
Elbe ran broad and rapid and four feet deep between 
the Emperor with his Spanish veterans and the 
Saxon camp on the higher shore. It was one of 
those days of bold resolve and of brilliant achieve- 
ment which gave to the contemporaries of Charles 
the impression that the " Star of Austria" must 
ever be in the ascendant. Yet when the Emperor 
pointed at the deep and strong waters and then at 
the Saxon position at Muhlberg on the further side, 
and announced his will that his army should plunge 
into the one in order to reach the other, even the 
dark and daring Alva turned to reason with his 
master on his madness. But Charles on his Spanish 
charger was soon deep in the river, pointing the way 
to the men-at-arms, who were all struggling with 
the fierceness of the stream. And the fierce stream 
was triumphantly crossed; the Saxons sustained a 
ruinous defeat ; the Elector was surrounded and 
taken prisoner. Wounded, and utterly exhausted 
with fatigue, John Frederic was led into his 
Kaiser's presence. But if he had previously been 
feeble in judgment, he was grand and strong in 



THE GAME OF CHESS. 149 

defeat. His step was firm, bearing erect, and colour 
unchanging, when he came before Charles and 
listened to his unfeeling taunts ; and then he passed 
as prisoner through his own states, with a dignified 
and unruffled composure. He was a man of extra- 
ordinary height, breadth, and strength. " The lank 
Spanish soldiers of Charles V.," writes Shoberl in 
his House of Saxony, "looked upon him as a giant, 
and declared that each of his boots would hold a 
man. This was certainly an exaggeration ; yet those 
who have had an opportunity of examining these 
relics, which are still preserved in the collections of 
curiosities at Gotha and Munich, assure us that they 
are capacious enough to contain a child five years 
old." The motto of the three Electors of Saxony of 
whom we have been treating was this : " Verbum 
Domini mane t in seternum " ("The word of the Lord 
endureth for ever"); and the initials of the motto 
were worn by all John Frederic's servants on the 
sleeves of their doublets. In this word so calm was 
his confidence, that neither when brought before the 
walls of his own Wittemberg, which was still held 
by his heroic wife Sibylla of Cleves, nor when the 
court-martial, composed of Spaniards and Italians, 
and presided over by the terrible Alva, was held in 
the Emperor's camp, and the Elector was condemned 
to be beheaded, did his moveless courage forsake 
him. The scene that followed is too characteristic 
to be omitted. He was deep in a game of chess 
with his fellow-captive Ernest of Brunswick, when 
the imperial messenger entered with the sentence of 
death. " I am condemned to death because Wittem- 
berg will not surrender," said the Elector ; "would 
to God that this sentence as little alarmed my wife 
and children as it discomposes me, and that they, 
for the sake of adding a few days for a life already too 



150 LUCAS CRANACH BEFORE CHARLES. 

long, may not renounce honours and territories which 
they were born to possess. Let us finish our game, 
Ernest." And the captives finished their game. 
The Magnanimous gained the mimic fight, at which 
result he expressed much satisfaction ; and then he 
rose and withdrew to spend his last hours in solemn 
devotion. But the agonised entreaties of Sibylla 
moved even the heart of Charles, a composition 
though it was of the Spaniard and the Austrian, and 
at length moved the heart of the condemned Elector 
likewise. Renunciation of the Electorate, with per- 
petual imprisonment, were the conditions of pro- 
longed life. But, whatever concessions were extorted 
from him against his own will by the tears of his 
wife and children, not a step would he stir where 
conscience or the law of his God was concerned. 
Charles had inserted in the capitulation an article 
binding the Elector to approve and submit to what- 
ever should be ordained by the Emperor or by the 
Council of Trent in the matter of religion. But not 
the shadow of death still hovering before his eyes, 
not the coercive power of his conqueror, could extort 
a subscription to this treacherous article. "I am 
determined," said the Magnanimous, " steadfastly 
to adhere to the confession delivered at Augsburg by 
my father, myself, and the other princes ; and rather 
to lose my dignity, my territories, nay even my life, 
than suffer myself to be separated from the word of 
God." They say that Charles, who had sufficient of 
the heroic element in him to admire this grand 
constancy, struck out the obnoxious article with his 
own pen. 

And now reappears on the scene the aged court- 
painter, Lucas Cranach. He interceded earnestly 
with Kaiser Charles on his beloved master's behalf, 
but without success. Yet the Emperor was not dis- 



LUKE CHOOSES CAPTIVITY. 151 

pleased with the loyalty of the faithful servant; and 
he proposed to him to change masters and go with 
him to the Netherlands. But no offers of promotion 
could shake the allegiance of the artist to his captive 
lord. This was true heroism at such a time of general 
consternation, scattering, and ruin. Lucas Cranach 
calmly made his election to share the captivity of 
his master the Magnanimous ; and for five long years 
of weary watching he kept close to his side. But 
the great emperor and the painter had a pleasant 
little colloquy before they parted — the one for the 
Netherlander division of his broad dominions, the 
other for the narrow imprisonment of Innsbruck. 
Charles told Lucas that he had in his possession at 
Mechlin a portrait representing himself when he was 
only eight years old, and asked the painter how 
he had procured the sittings. So Cranach told 
how he had stuck an arrow richly decorated in the 
wall opposite to the seat where sat the future king 
and kaiser, and how the eye of the young warrior 
had been fixed by the glittering symbol of his coming 
destiny. The Emperor liked the story well, and 
ordered his people to bring a silver platter of ducats 
for the painter. But the hand of the aged artist 
could be only made very sparingly to touch the plate 
of coins ; and again he steadfastly refused a new 
master and a golden appointment. Neither emperor 
nor artist then foresaw that the gilded arrow which 
had been the symbol of a swift-winged, startling, 
and ambitious career, would in eight more years, 
wearied with its hold, fall from the palace- wall and 
would lie useless and helpless, in some forgotten 
corner of the domain. 

Though Innsbruck was to be the head-quarters of 
the Elector's captivity, yet he had to submit to the 
cruel mortification of being carried about by the 



152 JOHN FREDERICKS RELEASE. 

Emperor from place to place. Sibylla and the 
children spent the years of separation in the castle 
of Weimar. The letters, which are still in existence, 
from the captive prince to his beautiful wife are a 
model of Christian correspondence. During the 
live years of her husband's imprisonment, Sibylla, 
flinging away all ornament, dressed herself in 
widow's weeds alone. At last the flood tide of 
Charles's prosperity began to turn, and in 1552 was 
signed at Passau the great religious peace. The 
unscrupulous Maurice of Saxony — the brilliant, 
treacherous, and successful rival of John Frederic 
the Magnanimous — was the chief agent in procuring 
that momentous peace which almost wholly undid the 
work of Charles's lifetime, which crossed every line 
he had drawn, unravelled every web he had woven, 
destroyed his hopes of making imperial power abso- 
lute and hereditary in his house, and laid broad 
and firm foundations for the Protestant Church in 
Germany. Foiled in his profound schemes for the 
total extirpation of the Protestant faith, Charles 
remembered the captive prince who had been for 
more than five years eating the bread of affliction ; 
and he lifted up his head again. It were better to 
purchase favour from the combined Protestants by 
setting their injured co-religionist at liberty, than 
to excite any more compassion by further tales of 
his magnanimity. Even Maurice, successful in 
schemes yet more profound than those of the 
Emperor, was willing that the victim from whom 
he had stolen the electorate should now live in 
freedom within a greatly narrowed domain. And 
so John Frederic the Magnanimous obtained his 
liberty, and Lucas Cranach, now eighty years old, 
came forth with his lord from a voluntary captivity. 
The son of the Magnanimous and the aged painter 



"i SHALL SOON FOLLOW HER." 153 

were his sole companions as lie made his homeward 
journey. Sibylla met them at Coburg on their way 
to the castle of Weimar. Doubtless the weeds were 
now in their turn flung aside, and the festal robes 
were resumed. But when she beheld her husband, 
she fainted away. Joy was more hard to bear than 
sorrow, and she only survived the meeting for two 
years of declining strength. On the glad arrival at 
Weimar, the husband, the wife, and the children, 
and no doubt the artist-friend, fell on the bended 
knee of thanksgiving, and offered up praises to God. 
But the broad inheritance was sorely clipped and 
pared ; Maurice (of the Albertine branch) still held 
the best of the land ; and only Weimar and G-otha 
fell to the rightful lord. 

The two years of Sibylla's decline were rich in 
affection; and when she was laid in the tomb, 
" Keep a place for me beside my wife," said John 
Frederic, " for I shall soon follow her, and I wish 
to be laid in the same grave." He was right in 
saying "he should soon follow;" they were parted 
but eleven days. He was fifty-one, she was forty- 
four. In the course of the next year, his faithful 
service having lasted to the end of his master's life, 
Lucas Cranach died also, in his eighty-third year, 
and was buried at Weimar in the garrison-church of 
St. Jacob. 



^Siifcfek 






THE COBBLER-POET OF 
NUREMBERG. 



In the quaint old city of Nuremberg, on the 5th of 
November, 1494, was born Hans Sachs, surnamed 
" The Prince of Master- Singers." A mean black- 
looking house in the street of the " Heiliger Greist," 
near the hospital of the same name, is shown as the 
place in which " the joyous poet" first drew breath. 
He was the son of Hans Sachs, a tailor ; and Hans 
the sire brought up Hans the son to the trade of a 
shoemaker. But before he was taught to make and 
mend the shoes of Nuremberg, the boy was sent 
to the Latin school, which he frequented from his 
seventh to his fifteenth year. While he was learn- 
ing his Latin tasks, Hans was likewise taking les- 
sons from a linen-weaver, Leonhard Nunnenbeck 
by name, in an art which almost exclusively be- 
longed to the burgher rank in life. 

Nuremberg was one of the most distinguished 
seats of that remarkable institution which distin- 
guishes mediaeval Germany, the association of 
"Meister- Sanger" (Master-Singers). It was a 
society composed almost entirely of artisans, who 
formed themselves into a body with the professed 
object of preserving the legendary traditions of 



THE SINGING-SCHOOL. 155 

national poetry, and of cultivating in the passing 
generations the beautiful gift of song. The ori- 
ginal corporation had consisted of twelve members, 
called the " Twelve Wise Masters ; " but the num- 
bers speedily increased ; and it is said that there 
were as many men of letters to be found amongst 
the shoemakers and tailors, the weavers, black- 
smiths, and barbers, of Nuremberg, Mayence, 
Frankfort, Strasburg, and Prague in the fifteenth 
century, as all Europe beside could count in her 
proud university cities! The " Sing-Schule " was 
so grave an institution, that at Nuremberg it was 
allowed to meet in the church; and it was there 
that young Hans Sachs was initiated into the rules 
of the " Meister-gesang " by good Leonhard Nun- 
nenbeck the weaver. In other cities the masters 
held their assemblies in hostelries ; but here the 
guild seems to have numbered many more members 
than anywhere else; and the assembly which met 
in the choir of the fine Gothic cathedral of St. Se- 
bald at the close of service consisted of 250, the 
larger proportion being master-shoemakers, whose 
trade the young Hans was destined to follow. 
About a century and a half before this time, the 
Emperor Charles IV. had decreed a coat-of-arms, 
as if they had been princes or gay cavaliers, to the 
tuneful company. An antique German engraving 
preserves the costume of the Nuremberg meister- 
singer. He is an old man with a high cocked hat, 
a doublet with strap and belt, and a cloak hanging 
over his shoulders. There is a large pouch at his 
side, very like the indispensable tobacco-pouch of 
the modern German. A money-bag it could 
scarcely be; for the muse of the master-singer 
was wholly unbought, and never came to his aid at 
the musical jingle of coin. True, there was a class 



156 THE MEISTER-SINGER. 

of professional rhymers called " Spruchsprecher " 
(Sentence-speakers), a northern rendering of the 
Italian Improvisatori, who travelled from village 
hostel to convent-gate, speaking verses for such 
poor pittance as their ready wit could extract from 
the leathern purses of their hearers. The poor poet 
of this mendicant order was bound to reply in 
rhyme, on the sharp impulse of the moment, to 
any jovial guest banqueting in castle-hall or inn- 
kitchen, who might put to him a question in wild 
caprice or throw him a random subject. The prince 
of the Spruchsprechers was Wilhelm Weber, who 
flourished in the sixteenth century; and some of 
his improvised poems had enough of life within 
them to preserve them to the present day. But 
the true meister-singer lived by much stricter rule. 
There was a stern code of rhyming laws called the 
" Tabulatur," under whose uncompromising sway 
he lived and sang ; and this bondage certainly had 
the effect of chilling the warm impulse of the ima- 
gination, and of giving a machine-like movement 
to his verse. The face of the old bard in the en- 
graving is evidently troubled by remembrance of 
the hard " Tabulatur," and his thin lips are con- 
tracted for want of freedom of utterance. The yoke 
surely galls. But though the master-singer was a 
poet who worked by written rule after too mecha- 
nical a fashion, he gave to his fellows a taste for 
intellectual cultivation which was amazingly hu- 
manising in an age of war, of ignorant superstition, 
and of coarse enjoyments. Heinrich of Mayence, 
surnamed Frauenlob, from his chivalrous " praises 
of women/' and Master Bartel Regenbogen (Bain- 
bow) had made Mayence resound with their melodies 
about the beginning of the fourteenth century. 
But it is needful to distinguish the Meister- 



THE MINNE-SINGKK. 157 

Sanger from their predecessors in time, the cele- 
brated Minnesanger of Germany. These were the 
courtly troubadours of the land, the knights-errant 
of song, the chivalrous order of minstrels, who 
were at home in court, castle, or bower, and who, 
chiefly in the south-west portion of Germany, sang 
love-songs like their brethren of fair Provence. 
The master-singers were of hardier growth ; they 
were of and belonging to the people. It was hard- 
handed industry singing at its work; it was the 
glad rebound of the hammer from the anvil ; the 
musical echo of the weaver's shuttle ; the chant 
which helped the shoemaker and the tailor over the 
long hours of sedentary toil. 

" As the weaver plied the shuttle, wove he too the 
mystic rhyme ; 
And the smith his iron measures hammered to the 

anvil's chime." Longfellow. 

Hans Sachs joined the singing-school in St. Se- 
bald's choir just at the turning-point from the 
mediaeval to the modern times. The world was in 
a transition state. A spirit of inquiry was moving 
society ; and people were asking questions and de- 
manding proofs where before they had accepted 
assertion merely because it was put forth by autho- 
rity. A strong current of opinion had set in which 
would soon overflow the old banks, and at length 
wash away the landmarks which had been set up by 
a haughty hierarchy. The singing-schools of this 
age had a manifestly liberalising tendency. That of 
Augsburgin particular was founded with the professed 
object of opposing the arrogance of the priesthood. 
A satire of the times says of the wise town-council 
of Augsburg, in the quaint German of the day : — 

" They have founded a singing-school, 
And have set up in the chair 
Him who speaks evil of the priests ; "— - 



158 THE FIVE YEARS' WANDERING. 

implying that a good gift at satirising the priests 
was the great qualification required in him who 
would aspire to sit in the professor's chair. 

The mind of Hans Sachs had been opened to 
religious impressions before he set forth for the 
five years' wandering from city to city which is 
required by law of the artisan youth of Germany, 
before they are received as master-workmen.* Hans 
began his long " wanderschaft " in his seventeenth 
year. Regensburg, the Eatisbon so familiar to our 
English ear, was the first place visited in that tour 
which was to perfect him in his calling (though one 
would think a five years' walk must have worn out 
more shoes than he could make) — Ratisbon, where 
sat for nearly a century and a half the imperial 
diets, which has itself sat in state beside the Danube 
ever since the days when it was the Castra Regina 
of the Romans, and which, before the new way to 
the East was opened upon the seas, saw the wealth 
of India, and the rich fabrics of Persia and Syria, 
piled upon her quays. Some of her singular bracketed 
towers, which jut out from the walls of the buildings, 
looking as if they were begging for caryatides to 

* This is a very ancient custom belonging to the institution of the 
guilds. The young artisan who is on travel must be furnished with 
a certificate of skill and of conduct from the master-craftsman with 
whom he has worked as journeyman during his stay in the place. 
He must moreover pass an examination, and be certificated by the 
head of the guild in the city wherein he is minded to settle at his 
trade. But while he is " on tramp" from place to place, he is a 
candidate for the free hospitalities of the poor peasantry of father- 
land; and a beautiful exercise of kindly feeling is called forth 
towards the tired youth with the little knapsack of tools, the hungry 
face, and the oaken staff. The house-father remembers the days when 
his own feet were worn by the long wandering ; and the house-mother 
freely offers the draught of milk and the slice of black bread as she 
looks down on her own little Fritz, whose turn must come one of these 
dreary days, or sighs while she thinks of Ludwig, perhaps dependent 
at that very moment on the kindly hospitality of a stranger. 



AT SALZBURG. J59 

support them, are surmounted by those little Oriental 
domes which still bear witness to the ancient transit- 
trade of Regensburg with the East. Passau, with 
its beetling defile, amid the turbulence of its three 
rivers (Danube, Inn, and Ilz), was next visited by 
the young shoemaker; a place afterwards made 
memorable in Protestant story by the signing, in 
1552, of that treaty which was extorted from reluc- 
tant Charles by the swift progress of Maurice of 
Saxony. And then the youth walked on to Salz- 
burg, whose wonderfully beautiful scenery would 
furnish the poetic mind with matchless imagery for 
after-use ; but as the modern poet is no vates, Hans 
would have no vision of the stern bigotry that after- 
wards drove 30,000 Protestants from this mountain- 
girdled home. Indeed the minstrel had at that 
period no presentiment that, by his poetic gift, he 
would become both a pioneer to clear the way, and a 
herald to announce the coming of the Eeformation. 
There were, so far as we know, at that time no 
confessors of the truth languishing in the torture- 
chamber of the archbishop's grand old castle on the 
hill-top ; though, before very long, numbers would 
there be found of whose sufferings and triumphs the 
walls have kept no record. 

Hans Sachs, as has been implied before, had 
formed excellent resolutions previous to his setting 
forth on " wander sch aft ; " but he was light-hearted 
and jovial ; and when he was surrounded by merry 
young companions, wanderers like himself, poor 
students or travelling craftsmen, the holy influences, 
which were striving to bind him to the service of 
God, were baffled by the subtle influences of the 
spirit of evil. Hans, feeling that he was well-nigh 
overcome by the triple forces of the world, the flesh, 
and the devil ; ever acting so fearfully in concert, 



160 HANS A HUNTSMAN. 

unstrapped his wallet from his shoulders, and settled 
down for a while in the ancient little town of Wels, 
in Upper Austria. Here he passed some sober time 
in cultivating the art into whose rules he had been 
initiated by the tuneful weaver, and whose living im- 
pulses he was beginning to obey. This was in 1513, 
when he was nineteen years of age. But after a 
while a stately cavalcade swept into the town, with a 
Kaiser at its head. This was Maximilian I. en route 
for Innsbruck. Maximilian, when he lodged in the 
castle, had no prevision that, but six years later, he 
would find his death-chamber there ; no misgiving 
either had he that he was destined never to be laid 
in the magnificent tomb that he prepared for him- 
self in the Innsbruck, whither he was now riding. 
Princes and potentates, from their lofty stand-point, 
can see no farther into the unknown land than the 
little folk down in their lowly valley. The eager 
banquet upon the melons, the deathbed in the castle 
of Wels, the empty sarcophagus at Innsbruck, cast 
no warning shadow. 

Hans Sachs was dazzled by the glitter of the 
courtly retinue, and found himself drawn along in 
its train. He was now a huntsman, wearing the 
showy uniform of the imperial hunting establish- 
ment at Innsbruck. In that beautiful little metro- 
polis of the beautiful Tyrol, Hans the huntsman did 
not remain for any great length of time. A court, 
even in the undress of the hunting season, and 
amongst mountains, glaciers, and chamois, was not 
the place for Hans the shoemaker, or Hans the 
master-singer; and soon feeling that he was un- 
faithful to his true calling, he threw aside feather 
and bugle-horn, and resumed his wallet and staff. 
He now shaped his course for Munich, and whilst 
there, when twenty years of age, composed his first 



HOME FROM THE " WANDERSCHAFT." 161 

poem. It was a hymn "in honour of the Holy 
Trinity," adapted to a favourite chant. It caught 
the ear and mind of the people in a moment, and 
fame set in upon the youth like a flood-tide. Frank- 
fort was his next resting-place ; and then he tracked 
the noble Rhine to Coblentz, and on to Cologne. 
After visiting Aix-la-Chapelle, he struck off to 
Leipzig ; then he is found at Liibeck, watching the 
waves of the Baltic; then at Osnabriick; next at 
Vienna ; and at length, having left his zigzag tracks 
all over the land, he completed his " wanderschaft " 
in the year 1516, and settled as shoemaker in the 
native city of Nuremberg. It is easy to conceive 
that such a five years' travel between the ages of 
seventeen and twenty-two would furnish a sagacious 
young artisan with a vast store of available intelli- 
gence. He saw burgher life and peasant life ; grand 
old cities and the grander country. He caught 
glimpses into the inner workings of men's minds as 
he passed along — saw how religion was overlaid by 
the " wood, hay, stubble" of papal invention; and 
caught the mutterings of that rising rebellion against 
priestly oppression which was already knitting many 
an honest brow, and swelling many a bold heart. 
Traces of all this personal observation are abundantly 
found in his after-poems. In addition to this close 
reading of men and the times, he had visited all the 
singing-schools throughout the wide circuit of his 
wanderings ; and when he was lingering at Wels, 
before he allowed himself to be drawn along for a 
while in the wake of the imperial cortege, he made a 
vow to devote his days to the art of song, foregoing 
all coarser indulgences. Such was the training of a 
remarkable poet, who should one day celebrate the 
work of Luther and the Reformation in a voice to 
which all men, high and low, were fain to listen. 

L 



162 NUREMBERG AND ITS PEOPLE. 

And now that Hans Sachs had settled down for 
the remainder of his many days in the grand city 
of Nuremberg, there were abounding historical as- 
sociations and fine picturesque effects which would 
greatly enrich the mind of a scholar of the " hold- 
selige kunst," the " graceful art" of song. The 
churches, some of them shooting their arrowy spires 
skyward, others loaded with elaborate ornamenta- 
tion, in which whole groups, in high relief, enact 
a parable or record a fact ; the massive cylindrical 
watch-towers ; the old imperial castle ; the thick 
walls and deep ditches ; the frescoed houses, and 
the patrician coats-of-arms emblazoned on the walls 
of the churches ; the entire streets of gabled houses, 
each offering some rare device in Gothic tracery, 
emblematic statue, pointed turret, bracketed oriel 
window, or garret-window peering from the roof, 
and yet dressod with carving worthy of a shrine ; — 
all were written over with history, feudal and eccle- 
siastical. Nuremberg was one of the favoured 
cities of the imperial house of Hohenstaufen ; and 
there Charles IV. had held his famous diet in 
1355, when the " Golden Bull " was enacted which 
decreed the constitution of the German empire; a 
bull whose provisions were sustained by a marvel- 
lous array of reasons, such as those which proved 
that the electors must be seven, instead of any 
other number, because the branches of the golden 
candlestick were seven, the sacraments seven, and 
seven the spiritual gifts. Nuremberg was less op- 
pressed by its Kaisers than by its patrician " heads 
of houses." It was worried by nearly thirty patri- 
cian masters, who all ruled at free will. But the 
workers in metals, who were the great artists of 
Nuremberg during the Middle Ages, had found at 
one period spirit enough within their stormy bosoms 



HANS SETTLES AND MARRIES. 163 

to arrest Kaiser Maximilian himself, who, during 
the diet of 1486, had run up bills to the amount of 
8000 florins, and who had supposed himself to be 
great enough to ride off without remembering to 
pay them. The oppression under which the citizens 
were bowed is sufficiently expressed by the old say- 
ing, " If you pass before the church, say one Pater- 
noster; if you pass before the town-house, say two." 
And no wonder that a trembling came over the 
citizen in such dangerous neighbourhood ; for under 
the town-house extended vast subterranean vaults, 
dungeons, and passages, whose secrets were locked 
up in the breast of the magistracy. The local 
usages of the city were very peculiar. During 
Hans Sachs' times the magistracy supported an 
especial carriage which was under commission to 
perambulate the streets and carry home all intoxi- 
cated persons who were not qualified to direct their 
own footsteps. Again : no one might sit down to 
enjoy his breakfast, dinner, or supper, until he had 
been bidden three times. Nuremberg long main- 
tained its advanced ground as a city of inventions. 
It claims the earliest manufacture of watches ; but 
this is a vexed question. At all events the " eggs 
of Nuremberg," as they were called on account of 
their oval shape, were some of the world's first 
watches. 

Three years after his return from travel, Hans 
was received as master-shoemaker, and in the same 
year, 1519, he married a young girl of the people, 
called Cunigunde Kreuzer. Cunigunde was a 
classical name in Nuremberg, for, in the court of 
the imperial Schloss, lived, and still lives, a famous 
lime-tree, now more than 700 years old, which was 
planted by the fair hands of Queen Kunigunda her- 
self, at least so say the echoes of the place. Cuni- 



164 THE "silver wedding. " 

gunde Kreuzer was well beloved by Hans Sachs. 
The humble workshop at one of the gates of the 
city was a happy home. Seven children sprang up 
around the shoemaker ; and when the day of the 
" silver wedding " came round, the meister-singer N 
sang a love-song to his Cunigunde, which showed 
that there was no tarnish on its sheen. The " silver 
wedding/' is kept on the twenty-fifth anniversary of 
the marriage-day, but poor Cunigunde died before 
she had earned the far greater festival of the " golden £ 
wedding," which is solemnised on the fiftieth return * ^ 
of the bridal day ; she lived to within four year s of ^ 
the time. Hans did not spend a very protracted 
season in mourning over his loss ; for we find that 
twelve months after her death he married Barbara 
Harscher, being himself sixty-six vears of age. If /* 
we may judge from the fervour with which he 
strikes his lyre in Barbara's praise also, she made 
his evening hearth a pleasant place. Indeed he 
always wrote most reverently concerning the holi- 
ness of marriage and the happiness of home. For 
a large space of his long life, these were some of 
the leading subjects of his muse. Sometimes he is 
looking round upon the dear happiness of his own 
home, sometimes he professes to be " listening at 
the windows of his neighbours," and sometimes he 
gives a view into the interior of the home-life of 
Germany through the poet's privileged side-window 
of observation. At all times Hans Sachs sings 
lovingly of marriage as a holy institution. He had 
the grief of surviving every one of his seven chil- 
dren, but Barbara seems to have kept the aged poet 
company down the hill to his eighty- second year, 
when his long " wanderschaft " ended in peace. 

The only portrait of Hans Sachs which we have 
seen represents him as an elderly man with a very 



g 

- 



1 ; 






/£U- f'd&' - 





^ Qaa i 




1 he Poet's "Silver Wedding.' 



See page 164. 



HANSS PORTRAIT. 165 

high collar to his coat. He wears no cap, so that a 
full view is given of his singularly lofty forehead. 
The short hair divides in the middle, fringing the 
temples, and a tightly-curling beard prolongs the 
decided oval of the face. The forehead is lined with 
the wheel-tracks of that swift chariot of thought 
which was perpetually dashing across it; and the 
keen little luminous eyes glance out from beneath 
an overhanging brow, which is so prominent as to 
cast a strong shadow beneath it. It is evident that 
there is a very sharp perception lurking under that 
beetling bank. The mouth is very peculiar, and 
there plays the comedy of the dramatic poet of Nu- 
remberg. It is opening to put forth some merry 
sarcasm or quaint pleasantry. 

We know not whether Hans was a very skilful 
shoemaker or not. He himself says that life for 
him consisted in singing, and that it was simply 
impossible to abstain from verse-making. The lyre 
was more to him than the last; and there his gilt 
was so remarkable, his success so brilliant, and his 
influence so wide, that it has been repeatedly written 
of him that " Hans Sachs was, for his country, as 
great a Reformer in poetry as Luther in religion, or 
Ulric Hiitten in politics." After he settled down as 
master-shoemaker and master-singer in Nuremberg, 
he gave earnest heed to the great religious move- 
ment which was stirring around him. He searched 
his Bible in quest of truth, and not only for its 
poetic imagery, picturesque situations, and lofty 
melodies, as he had done before ; and presently his 
writings showed that he had joined the ranks of the 
Reformers. In 1523, he composed the celebrated 
" Nightingale of Wittemberg." * The spiritual 

* Wittemberger Nachtigall, die man jetzt hort uberall ("The 
Nightingale of Wittemberg, which is now everywhere heard "). It 



166 HANS A HYMN-WRITER, 

songs of Hans Sachs most powerfully assisted the 
progress of the Reformation. They are amazingly 
numerous. Some of them are adaptations of popular 
ballads, even love-songs, to Christian thought and 
feeling, just as the popular airs were frequently 
taught to move in solemn tempo to the stately march 
of church-music. Several of the spiritual songs 
have held their ground in the hymn-books of modern 
times; and there is one in particular, the well- 
known 

" Warum betriibst du dich, mein Herz ? " * 

which has had a wonderfully wide circulation. It is 
frequently entitled " The Solace of the Aged ;" and it 
has been translated three times into Latin, once into 
Greek, into English, Dutch, French, Lower Saxon, 
and Polish. 

TRANSLATION. 

My heart ! my poor self -troubled heart ! 

Say why so sore oppress'd 
With every changing care and smart 

That stirs my worldly rest ? 
Oh, trust in God, and take each care, 

And lay it on His breast. 

He cannot, will not, let thee fall, 

Heart-broken 'neath thy load ; 
But takes a father's share in all, 

Along the roughest road. 
Thou know'st my need — my griefs are Thine, 

My Father and my Grod ! 

is a lively panegyric of Luther, while Pope Leo is represented as a 
lion which has betrayed the flock into a desert with the purpose of 
devouring it. But the song of the nightingale is heard rising above 
the mists of the morning, and the wanderers joyfully quit the desert 
and the darkness, won back to the flowery meadows of truth by the 
irresistible melody. A fanciful allegory, but the taste of the day was 
suited. A Jesuit called Spee wrote an opposition " Nightingale " 
(Trotz-Nachtigatt), in order to counteract its effect. 
• " Why troublest thou thyself, my heart? " 



"the solace of the aged." 16? 

And therefore — just because Thou art 

My Father — nanght shall move 
The child from off Thy Father-heart, 

Or change a Father's love. 
I, a poor earth-clod, save in The© 

No trust, no joy can prove. 

Whoever may forsake Thy truth, 

Yet will I hold it fast ; 
Through scorn and shame, contempt and ruth, 

I'll trust Thee to the last. 
I know the blessing cannot fail, 

Because the word is passed. 

God, Thy treasure changeth not, 

Nor ever wears away ; 
The goodness of to-morrow's lot 

Is sure as yesterday ; 
And Thou hast riches for the soul 

For ever and for aye. 

Earlh's fleeting honours I forego 

With willing heart for Thee 
Whose blessings, which begin below, 

Increase eternally. 
And, through Thy bitter death and woe, 

These blessings are for me. 

Earth's silver and her gold may fail, 

Her tinsel may decay ; 
And transient pleasures, fleet and frail, 

Grow dim and pass away ; 
Nor help, nor mar, the blessedness 

Which shall endure for aye. 

1 thank Thee, Christ, eternal Lord ! 

Who unto me hast brought 
The teaching of Thy holy Word, 

With heavenly blessings fraught; 
And to my soul her only bliss^ 

And happiness hast taught. 

All honour be ascribed to Thee, 

Thanksgiving, and all praise, 
Fcr all Thy goodness full and free, 

And all Thy full-brought grac3. 
One prayer I pray, — turn not away 

The shining of Thy face. 

j. a 

AVhen the reformed doctrine made its way into 
Nuremberg and roused the whole city, Hans put 



168 BIDDEN TO MAKE SHOES, NOT VERSES. 

forth a print under the title, "A curious Prophecy 
concerning Popedom, and what will happen to it to 
the end of the world, represented in figures or 
pictures found at Nuremberg in the Carthusian 
cloister, and very ancient in origin." But the poet 
therein treated Pope and Kaiser in such discourteous 
fashion, that the municipal council of Nuremberg 
caused the brochure to be seized and burnt, — the 
approved punishment for unruly books as well as 
men. At the same time the workohop was visited 
by a severe official reprimand : Hans was bidden to 
make shoes for the future, and no more verses ; and 
he was cautioned against any further converse with 
literature, either in prose or rhyme. This pamphlet 
is now extremely rare, as the conflagration was a 
large one. But to request Hans Sachs to be quiet 
was like commanding a brook to hush its liquid 
voice, or bidding a song-bird be silent amidst the 
irrepressible gladness of the spring. There was a 
fountain of song within his breast which must needs 
break forth, — 

" Whose only business was to flow ; 
And flow it did, not taking heed." 

A continuous stream of rhymed pamphlets in 
favour of Protestantism poured forth from the work- 
shop at the city-gate ; and having relieved official 
conscience by an intrepid protest, the magistracy 
must of course have connived at this freedom of 
production, especially as Hans was afterwards com- 
placent enough to employ a somewhat calmer strain. 
He wrote like a man who saw clearly, felt strongly, 
and thought boldly. But though his style was the 
fruit of the age in which he lived, — rude, faulty, and 
unvarnished, — he never gave way to that stormy 
wrath with which Luther, when he chose, could 
demolish every " refuge of lies ;" neither did he cut 



HANS A MAN OF LEARNING. 169 

with the keen battle-axe of Ulric Hiitten. Yet 
there is a vast amount of life, vigour, nerve, and 
good common-sense in his verses ; and if Lucas 
Cranach were the painter of the Reformation, and 
Albert Diirer one of its great disciples, Hans Sachs 
was, without controversy, its poet. So amazingly 
fruitful was his genius, that his distinct poems 
amount to the almost incredible number of 6048, 
exclusive of the Meister-songs ! They were essayed 
in all the different measures and rhythms which 
were knovra in his time. The learning of Hans 
was prodigious, whether we consider either the man 
or the age. He is believed to have read everything 
that came out in print in his native country during 
his lifetime; and he was acquainted with many 
works besides, which he could only have seen in 
manuscript. He knew all those classical authors — 
poets, historians, and philosophers — that had been 
hitherto translated into German; and he was so 
conversant with Greek and Roman mythology as to 
employ it largely in the mechanism of some of his 
dramas. He was manifestly acquainted with Pe- 
trarch, Boccacio, iEneas Sylvius ; while he was 
deeply read in the history of the Fatherland, knew 
its old chronicles and annals, lays and epics, and 
had even drunk into the wild Sagas of the north. 
This is an astounding mass of learning for a man of 
his place in life ; and the learned scholar, Philip 
Melancthon, is known to have expressed his amaze- 
ment at the erudition of Hans Sachs, the cobbler- 
poet of Nuremberg. 

But Nuremberg would almost bear comparison 
with the great republican cities of Italy during the 
Middle Ages for the long list of great names which 
it could show in its records — for its painters, sculp- 
tors, and historians, as well as for its fine industrial 



170 NUREMBERG RICH IN GREAT MEN. 

development and noble institutions. Albert Diirer 
was its own. Adam Krafft, one of Germany's 
greatest sculptors, has left the fine marks of his 
chisel in his native city. Peter Vischer and his 
five sons, all sculptors like their father, have adorned 
St. Sebald's shrine with the bronze figures, one 
hundred in number, which are the fruit of thirteen 
years' continual toil. Wilibald Pirkheimer was a 
Nuremberger; so were Behaim the mathematician 
and Melchior Pfinzing the poet. There seemed 
something in the very air of the old imperial city 
that stimulated the intellectual activities, and de- 
veloped artistic taste. 

Hans, long after he had completed his " wan- 
derschaft," was in the habit of taking journeys in 
pursuit of his shoemaking trade, which brought 
him acquainted with manners and men, striking 
scenes and great events. He was ever learning, 
ever observing, and ever turning his fresh stores of 
intelligence to account. Of the 6048 poems, 208 
were dramas, and 1700 were, according to his own 
description, " mirthful comedies, melancholy trage- 
dies, and diverting drolleries." Five folio volumes 
of these heterogeneous sallies of the Nuremberg 
muse have lived to the present day ; but these are 
but a small part of the original number, which are 
said to have amounted to no less than thirty-four 
folios in manuscript. At first the poems used to 
come out in fly-sheets. It was a continuous fire of 
" broadsides " over the counter, directed at the faults 
and follies of the age, or provocative of its light 
laughter. Of course many enemies were made by 
these attacks, though Hans was genial and not by 
any means malicious; and often the witty shoe- 
maker, who had no taste for hot warfare and who 
much preferred a sham-fight, would threaten to be 



HANS A VOLUMINOUS POET. 171 

quiet — the worst punishment he could inflict on his 
age. But presently the impulse would again be so 
strong within him, that another and another fly-leaf 
fluttered over the counter, and the minstrel was once 
more in full song. It was not possible to cease 
from the praise of virtue and the rebuke of vice, 
and the great master-singer was himself overmas- 
tered by song. The first collection of his scattered 
poems appeared in the year 1558 at the shop of 
George AY iller, the Augsburg bookseller, under the 
supervision of Hans himself. Two years later a 
second volume came out, and in 1561 a third. But 
he excluded all his master-songs (Meistergesange) 
from these collections, as being unworthy to take 
rank amongst the true progeny of genius. He held 
that they were born in bonds — born under the yoke 
of the " Tabulator ;" and therefore all the serf- 
children of the " singing-school" were passed over. 
He loved the institution for its humanising influ- 
ences upon his own working-class ; but free citizen 
of a free city, and a free-born son of song, he re- 
volted against artificial trammels. He signs himself 
on the title-page of his works as " Hans Sachs, 
Lover of German Poetry" (" Liebhaber Deutscher 
Poeterei") ; a modest description commonly adopted 
by the meister-singers. 

The meister-singer's prize was a wreath of golden 
leaves interspersed with seven roses ; and after this 
triumphal chaplet aspired many a poor artisan, as 
he filled up the weary hours of daily toil. But it 
was not the hard hands alone that were striving to 
reach the crown with the golden leaves. There 
were doctors who compounded the song by weight 
and by measure according to the received pharma- 
copoeia of the " singing-school ;" astronomers who 
left their stars for the seven shining roses ; and 



172 THE MODERN SINGING-SCHOOL. 

many masters of the liberal arts who eagerly added 
" meister- singer " to their honours, and wrote " Lover 
of German Poetry" after their name. However, it 
was mainly the burgher or industrial interest that 
was represented in the poetic guild, the shoemakers 
more than any other class ; and Hans Sachs, the 
Prince of Shoemakers, clung to the chaplet of silken 
roses as to a prize of great social influence, which 
raised the aspirations of the children of toil from all 
that was coarse and debasing. 

The " singing-school" of Nuremberg is now fre- 
quented by a different set of scholars. Numbers of 
captive birds are heard learning their " Tabulatur" 
in almost every street of the city. The meister- 
singers are still the artisans, who employ their 
leisure in whistling " volkslied" tunes to their little 
pupils ; and when they have completed their musical 
education, the feathered minstrels go off on their 
" wanderschaft" all over Swabia and the Tyrol. 
Sometimes as many as 10,000 regularly-taught song- 
birds are sent out of Nuremberg in the course of a 
single year. 

The didactic and religious poems of Hans Sachs 
were singularly influential on his age. Sometimes 
he paraphrases whole chapters of the Bible ; at 
others, he commends to the people, in popular song, 
the pure morality of the Gospel or its holy doctrines. 
Quotations from Scripture are constantly enwoven ; 
and all the while he is the poet of real life, dealing 
with " the common growth of mother earth," choos- 
ing dramatic incident from the natural course of 
daily existence ; the poet of real life, even when he 
employs the ponderous machinery of allegory, or 
goes out of his path to trap a fairy, to hunt up a 
dwarf, or hold colloquy with a heathen god or a 
malicious demon. They all talk German ; they all 



HIS PROTESTANT WRITINGS. 173 

belong to Fatherland, whatever their birth and 
breeding; and the table-talk of Olympus is the 
same as that of the Nuremberg burgomaster of the 
16th century. At the close of his allegory, he 
commonly sums up the " moral" with a sort oi 
well-satisfied " Q. E. D." Thus, in one of his most 
celebrated dramas, called " The Children of Eve. 
a comedy in five acts," after a lengthy movement oi 
thoroughly German life and scenery, he makes the 
herald reappear, who explains the progress of every 
act, the character of every person, and the morality 
meant to be taught. There is one characteristic 
form of his didactic poems which is particularly 
pointed and graphic. These are " Antagonistic 
Dialogues" (" Kampf-gesprache"), in which Youth 
and Old Age, Life and Death, Poverty and Wealth, 
Patience and Anger, meet in conversation, and 
discuss human affairs with rare truthfulness and 
sagacity. To us this mode of teaching would be 
highly uncongenial; but in the 16th century, when 
minds were fermenting with new ideas, men were 
eager to listen to an open discussion on any subject 
whatever, and were glad to hear even the abstract 
virtues and vices indulge in the expression of free 
opinion. 

Hans twice saw Luther. They met at Augsburg ; 
and the poet willingly gave his heart to the great 
Reformer and to his doctrines. He eagerly possessed 
himself of all his writings^ and was earnest in com- 
mending his views to the acceptance of others ; and 
when Martin Luther died, the shoemaker mourned 
him in a funeral discourse. His own works in sup- 
port of Protestantism were milder in temper than 
those of many of the controversialists of the day. 
But his language when denouncing the abuse of the 
confessional and of absolution, his description of the 



174 HIS LOVE OF LIBERTY. 

priests and their lives, and his views of a Church 
which was ever grasping after power and pelf, are 
sufficiently startling to our modern ears. Again, in 
his " Evangelium," he sternly rebukes princes for 
having adopted the Gospel side of the great dispute 
on wholly selfish grounds, either from the hope of 
personal aggrandisement or as an excuse for throwing 
off the restraints of imperial control. He mourns 
that the new light is beginning already to pale ; and 
describes theology as distracted by the sudden up- 
springing of numberless sects, which were biting 
and devouring one another instead of defending the 
common cause against the general foe. 

Hans Sachs was a fervent lover of freedom in the 
political as well as the religious sense ; witness the 
spirit in which his historical poems are written. An 
extract from one of these on " Swiss Liberty " is 
here given by way of specimen : — 

ON THE LIBEKTY OF SWITZEKLAND. 

TRANSLATION. 

From a small birth her freedom's grown, 

Nor will she any lordship own ; 

From old time her brave hearts and strong 

Held it, and God preserve it long ! 

Land of the warm heart and the just, 

Her sons right noble, true to trust, 

Give to the feeble service leal, 

And seek alone the public weal ; 

Truth they uphold inviolate, 

Nor wrong nor falsehood tolerate ; 

By-path and highway they defend, 

And treat the stranger as the friend — 

Good burghers all, this their endeavour, 

And so God gives them victory ever. 

Ne'er may she wane, but strong and stronger wax ; 

So prays 

Your friend in Nuremberg, 

Hans Sachs. 
H. 



HANS THE FOUNDER OF TOE GERMAN DRAMA. 175 

But Hans's great art lay in the skilful employment 
of satire and comedy. The sting was playfully used ; 
but it was nevertheless so well barbed that it was 
not easy to extract it, neither was the wound readily 
healed. Yet vice and falsehood were the enemies 
that chiefly had to writhe under his sharp pleasan- 
tries ; the good and the true were spared ; and if 
our Hogarth were a great moral painter, surely Hans 
Sachs was a great moral poet. He is, moreover, 
claimed as the founder of the German drama; 
though many of his dramatic poems are mere chap- 
ters of the Bible done into verse, and thrown into 
the form of dialogue. He was far from intending 
any disrespect to Holy Scripture by these quaint 
paraphrases or travesties ; it was only his mode of 
teaching, and it was a mode in keeping with the 
spirit of the age. Lessons were taught in fable ; 
pictures were painted in allegory ; the old dramatic 
" mysteries" and " moralities" were half religious 
observances, and the vestments of cathedrals were 
worn by the grotesque actors. But Hans Sachs was 
the first to introduce regular movement, plan, and 
action into the German drama. He generally gave 
five or seven acts ; but his play was more an allegory 
in motion than anything else — rude, unfinished, 
sketchy, deficient in the human element — but still 
an amazing advance upon anything that had gone 
before. Genius marked it; for real native genius 
was developed in almost everything he composed. 
But he was deficient in finish, in fine delineation 
of character, and in the rendering of all the more 
delicate gradations of feeling. Upright honest prin- 
ciple, good native sense, shrewd sagacity, strong 
humour, and pointed satire were his general cha- 
racteristics. There was a want of fine musical 
cadence in his compositions ; for Hans was generally 



176 HIS OLD AGE AND DEATH. 

rugged, earnest, and strong — too rapid in production 
to spend much time and care in polishing. Neither 
did the great Meister-singer of Nuremberg excel in 
that simpler harmony which often makes the " volks- 
lied" of Germany so charming to the ear. He 
lived at the turning-point from the old times to the 
new in poetry as in other more important things ; 
and the shoemaker's shop near one of the gates of 
Nuremberg, ever echoing with song and stirring 
with living thought, is a connecting-link between 
the fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries. 

Hans was a bright, vigorous old man, composing 
verses up to his seventy-fifth year. Then he quietly 
laid down his lyre ; but the aged poet continued to 
take an eager interest in the "singing-school" of 
Nuremberg. His strong mental and bodily powers 
began to fail in his seventy-eighth year ; and for 
the four remaining years of his life, the snowy- 
haired bard used to sit at a table " covered with 
many good old books/' his head bent over them, as 
if still studying the perplexed rules of the " Tabu- 
lator," or laying with fine strategy the plan of a new 
campaign against " spiritual wickedness in high 
places." Adam Puschman, in his poem on the 
death of Hans, describes him as 

" An old man, grey and white and dove-like, 
Who had in sooth a great beard, 
And who read in a fair great book, 
Beautiful with golden clasps." 

He was of a glad heart and a bright spirit to the 
end of his many days, though the intellectual and 
the bodily part had become so infirm ; and in the 
year 1576, at the age of eighty- two, died the prince 
of Meister-singers, Hans Sachs, the grand old shoe- 
maker of Nuremberg. 



HIS EPITAPH. 177 



ON THE TOMBSTONE OF HANS SACHS. 

TRANSLATION. 

Here in the restful earth I slumber calm, 

Till by the might of Christ I wakened am ; 

Me He will rouse, bursting my prison's portal, 

And set at large, instinct with life immortal ; 

My soul and spirit again one mystery, 

Therein shall I see God my Lord, and be 

In the glory of the Holy Trinity. H« 




m 



"THE TENTH MUSE." 



The history of the scholar-life of Italy during the 
16th century may be called the history of its at- 
tempted reformation. The enlightenment began in 
the learned retirement of the men of letters, spread 
almost exclusively amongst the educated circles, and 
died out under cruel persecution, or was banished 
with the exiles to other lands. It never in Italy 
fairly took hold of the common people ; it scarcely 
touched their strong sympathies, or stimulated their 
mighty power of endurance. Learned men and 
learned women studied, believed, and suffered. But 
the Gospel had not time in that oppressed country 
to reach the mass of the people, and to rouse their 
simplicity of faith and their directness of purpose, 
before it was seized by the strong hand of repressive 
power. It was different with the northern nations. 
Germany was permeated with Gospel truth; for 
there it reached the people and leavened the mass, 
getting amongst craftsmen and burghers as well as 
schoolmen and ecclesiastics. Holland was Luther- 
anised almost wholly, for there the Gospel made its 
way into the workshop as well as into the university. 
France had her whole provinces and her whole 



FULVIO MORATO. 179 

armies of Huguenots. In Denmark, Sweden, and 
Norway, the common people heard the truth gladly, 
and held it bravely; while in Britain, north and 
south, the people eagerly seized the new-found Bible, 
and are still pressing it to their heart with the ardour 
of a first love. In Italy there was a noble band of 
confessors, of the intellectual class, who counted all 
things but loss when weighed against the gain of 
their souls. Of these we will take a specimen- 
family, and follow its fortunes ; for the story of that 
household is an epitome of the Reformation in 
Italy. 

Two miles distant from Pietole, which is held to 
be the birthplace of Virgil, stands Mantua, amidst 
the reedy swamps of the Mincio, where the river 
widens into a lagoon. In this city was born Fulvio 
Peregrino Morato, probably towards the end of the 
15th century ; at all events he was giving lessons in 
the newly-revived literature of Greece and Rome 
to the gay young nobles of his native city in the 
early quarter of the 16th century. He was a lay- 
man ; and having made himself intimate with the 
languages of Plato and Cicero, he was glad to turn 
his learning into a piece of bread ; in other words, 
to support himself by the right honourable barter. 
It has been well remarked, that hitherto the pro- 
fession of education had been almost wholly confined 
to ecclesiastics ; for they were in fact the only 
" clerks " of the community. But now there was a 
general burst of intelligence; people became eager 
to learn, and the demand was instantly met by a 
supply of those who were glad to teach. The languid 
" churchmen " who had long been lounging at their 
ease on the soft slopes of their own exclusive " hill 
of Zion," were neither disposed nor ready to meet 
the sharp encounter of intellects ; and so the busi- 



180 THE INQUISITION AND THE SCHOOLMASTERS. 

ness of teaching rapidly passed into the hands of 
the laity. Kanke says, in his History of the Popes, 
" The new doctrine had made its way with extraor- 
dinary rapidity among the middle classes. The 
decree of the Inquisition, which reckons 3000 school- 
masters as adherents to it, seems like an exaggera- 
tion ; but supposing the numbers to be smaller, how 
great must have been its influence on youth and on 
the mass of the people." Fulvio did not confine his 
lessons within the walls of his native Mantua, but 
perambulated the north of Italy with his learned 
stores ; and at length he is found holding the chair 
of Humanity in the University of Ferrara. About 
the year 1525 he married a lady of that city, of 
excellent abilities and of many virtues. The home of 
the man of letters was a happy one, and five chil- 
dren took their places in their turn around Fulvio 
and Lucrezia's table. The eldest of these was a 
daughter, born in 1526, a bright little maiden, who 
early began to listen with arch intelligence to the 
learned talk which was going on in the library of 
the Humanity Professor. That child was to expand 
into the celebrated Olympia Morata, whom admiring 
contemporaries delighted to call " the Tenth Muse." 
The talkers at Morato's house were worth listening 
to. One was Celio Calcagnini, who, though he occu- 
pied the chair of the " Belle lettere" in the Univer- 
sity, had room in his ample mind for astronomy, 
mathematics, antiquarian lore, and a long list of 
other learned gifts and graces. " Kiss for me the 
little Muse whose prattle is so charming," wrote 
Calcagnini to the proud father, when absent on 
some vacation tour; and long afterwards the old 
scholar reminded Olympia that " the language of 
the muses had been her earliest mother- tongue." 
Then there were the two German brothers Chilian 



A LITERARY CIRCLE. 181 

and Johann Sinapi, the latter of whom was Pro- 
fessor of Medicine, while the former delighted to 
leave his Greek chair in the University, and teach 
the little black-eyed Muse to pronounce the sonorous' 
Attic tongue in her clear Italian voice ; and the child 
repaid him with almost a daughter's love. And then 
there were Giglio Giraldi, great in Greek, and pon- 
derous in ancient mythology, one of the greatest 
scholars of that scholarly age ; and Riccio, the hot- 
tempered critic, who had to smooth his irritability 
into court proprieties as tutor to young Alfonso 
D'Este, the little son of the reigning Duke Hercules 
and Duchess Renee ; and there were Paleario and 
Marc Antonio Flaminio, the last a great scholar 
and greater poet. These were the influences under 
which Olympia Morata passed her early days. 

But there was a break of six anxious years in 
this pleasant course of life. Some unfair enmity 
or jealousy had been roused against the father 
Morato; unfounded charges were brought against 
him, and he was obliged to resign his Humanity 
chair at Ferrara, and go forth into the world again 
with Lucrezia and all the little children beside him. 
This was about the year 1533. The poor travellers 
wandered from city to city; Vicenza, Cesena, Venice, 
were some of the tarrying-places : and still, resting 
or travelling, the leading passion of the proud father's 
heart was steadily pursued — that of filling Olympia's 
mind with as much learning as it could be made to 
carry. The child was rapidly becoming a wonder ; 
and she bravely met the terribly high pressure of 
her father's educational plans, learning everything 
that he could teach her and a great deal more. In 
the course of their wanderings the Morata family 
visited Vercelli in Piedmont, and here Fulvio met 
with a noticeable person, Celio Secondo Curio, or 



182 THE BIBLE AND THE RELICS. 

Curione, by name, who was already under persecu- 
tion, on account of the freedom of his religious 
opinions. He had been reading the Bible for him- 
self at the age of twenty, and had also been infected 
by some works of Philip Melancthon. His was so 
ardent a nature, that it was impossible to keep con- 
viction within the sober bounds of prudence. He 
had already been in prison at Ivrea on suspicion 
of heresy ; and when a relative obtained his release 
on the stipulation that he should retire into the 
quietude of a monastery, he one day yielded to an 
uncontrollable impulse, and removed the saintly 
relics from the high altar of the chapel, placing his 
new-found treasure, the Bible, in their stead, with 
this inscription : " This is the ark of the covenant, 
which contains the genuine oracles of God and true 
relics of the saints ;" and then, knowing what the 
effects of this expressive transposition would be, he 
ran away. A runaway monk,* m a land of lord 
abbots and priors, is in a sorry position; but at 
Milan the incurable heretic made himself a thorough 
outlaw, by that step which in Luther's case had 
proved to the world that for him there could be no 
return into the bosom of his mother Church. He 
married a wife ! a lady of the illustrious family of 
Isacii. It was like an invader burning the ship 
which has brought him to the island he has deter- 
mined to conquer ; there could be no return. But 
Curio's learning was so remarkable, and the demand 
for masters at this awakening time so great, that 
he continued for some time to gain an honourable 
livelihood by teaching Greek and Latin. This lull 

* Some writers appear to be of the opinion that Curio had not 
taken the vows, bat was only living in the monastery " under care." 
Trollope, in his Decade of Italian Women, treats his profession as 
an already accomplished fact. 



TIIE LITERARY CIRCLE MEETS AGAIN. 183 

in the storm could not last long, and soon lie was a 
hunted fugitive in his native Piedmont. At Ver- 
celli he came across the path of the other wanderer, 
Fulvio Morato. There was between the two scholars 
the fellowship of a common adversity ; and Morato, 
who had not yet received the brand of heresy on his 
forehead, and who was in better case, as he had a 
lodging for his family, took in the outcast and bade 
him welcome to his crust. The scholars sat and 
talked as men talk who meet in a roadside inn and 
find they are going the same way, to the same place, 
with the same object in view. They were brothers 
in a moment ; and after Fulvio Morato had bidden 
Curio sit down and share with him and Lucrezia the 
bread and olives and roasted chestnuts and sour wine, 
he found he had been entertaining an angel un- 
awares. And all the while young Olympia sat and 
listened, with what effect her after-life will show. 

At length, after six years of unsettled life, a recall 
to Ferrara and to his professorship in the University 
came from Duke Hercules II. himself. Calcagnini, 
the faithful old friend of the family, had moved the 
Duke's mind to this tardy recall ; and Fulvio found 
that he was even to be intrusted with the tutorship 
of two of the young princes, Alfonso and Alfonsino. 
It was a very joyful return. The old set of brilliant 
associates crystallised around Fulvio's board as in 
the former days; and the learned talk went on as 
if no such dreary hiatus as the six years of banish- 
ment had interrupted the flowing tide of ideas. 
Olympia, now a very beautiful girl of thirteen, was 
not merely an intelligent listener, but was able to 
take a sparkling share in the discussions. She could 
quote Greek or recite Latin with exquisite propriety 
and with the finest accent ; and the old professors 
listened to the young muse with delighted deference. 



184 CURIO IN TROUBLE AGAIN. 

But Fulvio, in his prosperity, had not forgotten 
the runaway brother who had found refuge in his 
poor lodging at Vercelli ; and hearing that the un- 
fortunate Curio was again in trouble, he wrote to 
him in these words : " Come to us ; you will find 
your place in our home vacant ; and especially there 
is a corner for you in my library, where you may 
indulge in the united blessings of solitude, silence, 
peace, and oblivion." Curio had been much tossed 
about the world since the friends had parted in 
Piedmont. He had been living for some time in 
an obscure village in Savoy, teaching the children 
of the neighbouring noble and gentle families, when, 
having gone one day to listen to the preaching of a 
Dominican monk from Turin, he was scandalised at 
hearing the orator traducing the German Reformers, 
and above all making falsified quotations from a 
work of Luther. His zeal was immediately in a 
flame; and when the sermon was finished, he 
drew the book from his pocket, and read out the 
passages which had been tampered with, to the 
preacher's extreme confusion, and to the exaspera- 
tion of the congregation, who immediately drove the 
Dominican out of the town. For this escapade 
Curio was denounced to the Inquisition, and was 
carried off a prisoner to Turin. While an emissary 
of the " Holy Office" was speeding to Rome to make 
sure of a condemnation, Curio was made fast in 
prison with both feet in the stocks. A hopeless 
position, one would say; but the prisoner's active 
mind worked until it wove an ingenious scheme for 
eluding even the crafty familiars of the Inquisition. 
His feet were so swollen with the painful confine- 
ment, that he persuaded his keeper to allow one foot 
at a time to be loosed from the stocks ; so the right 
foot was indulged with the first turn. He then 



TI1E INQUISITION OUTWITTED. 185 

dressed up a fictitious foot with materials that 
happened to be lying within reach of his hand — 
common straw and a bundle of rags and his own 
shoe ; then he fastened the life-like limb to his right 
knee, in a manner so skilful that it could be moved 
about with ease. He was lying in an inner chamber, 
dark as the deeds that were done within its walls ; 
so that when he begged his gaoler to change the 
prisoned legs and now release the left one in its 
turn, the deluded official locked in the limb of straw 
and left the limb of flesh at liberty. So far all was 
favouring. At length night came. The prisoner 
crept from his corner, forced the door of his cell, — 
for the chief duty had been intrusted to the stocks, 
— felt his way along the walls of the dark corridor, 
climbed through a window, dropped down into the 
court, scaled the surrounding wall with painful diffi- 
culty, and ran off into the open country ! As he had 
reduced the hypocritical leg into its original elements 
before creeping out of his cell, the report was circu- 
lated by his outwitted keepers that Curio had evapo- 
rated by help of magic. Curio's escape stands as 
an almost solitary instance in the long history of 
the Inquisition. 

After hiding for a few months in the Milanese, 
he was placed by acclamation in a professor's chair 
in the University of Pavia, where his lectures were 
thronged with scholars, who flocked from other 
places to hear him; and when orders came from 
Rome that the magician should be seized, the stu- 
dents formed themselves into a volunteer body- 
guard, which protected him in going to and from 
his house to the hall every day, for the greater part 
of three years. Whereupon his Holiness was fain 
to threaten the Senate with excommunication if 
they did not deliver him up ; and then the professor 



186 A FRESH ENTERPRISE. 

left his chair and escaped to Venice, whence he 
reached Ferrara at the hospitable bidding of his now 
prosperous friend, Fulvio Morato. The door was 
gladly opened to welcome the fugitive ; and Curio, 
for a year or two's space, thankfully occupied the 
prophet's chamber. His influence was the means of 
opening many blinded eyes wherever he moved on 
his many journeys and precipitous flights ; while his 
crossing the threshold of the Morata family was no 
chance incident; for when, " after those days," 
Curio departed from Ferrara, " he left souls that 
clave unto him and believed." Prominent amongst 
these was his generous host, who afterwards writes 
to him : " It was your living eloquence and mighty 
spirit which, in a lively and efficient manner, moved, 
affected, excited, and warmed me; so that I now 
acknowledge my former ignorance, and can say, ' It 
is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me, and 
I in Christ.' " 

When Curio was forced to flee from Ferrara also, 
by the haunting malice of his enemies, Duchess 
Renee, whose sympathies were all on the side of the 
persecuted, recommended him to the Senate of 
Lucca, which thereon gave him a place in the Uni- 
versity. But letters soon followed him from the 
Pope to the magistracy, demanding that he should 
be given up and sent off" to Rome. A timely hint 
fiom the well-affected authorities gave him space to 
fly to Lausanne; and there he rested safely for a 
while, amongst honouring and honoured friends. 
But the thought of the lady- wife left behind at 
Lucca, with her group of little ones, sent him off 
again on another of his romantic exploits. As soon as 
he had crossed the Alps, it was evident to him that 
the familiars of the Inquisition were again on his 
track; but with his characteristic ingenuity he 



CURIO AND THE CARVING-KNIFE. 187 

eluded them, either getting ahead or slipping behind, 
until he reached the neighbourhood of Lucca. In 
the town of Pessa he paused, in order to give time 
to his wife to join him with the children. But the 
cloaked figures — men with that look of deep reserve 
which the possession of a secret commission stamps 
even on the most carefully trained features — had 
marked Curio as he entered the little inn in Pessa ; 
and one day, while he still lingered for the coming 
of his wife, a captain of the papal band, called 
■ 6 Bargelli," stepped into the room as he sat at din- 
ner, and called upon him in the Pope's name to give 
himself up as prisoner. Curio sprang to his feet,— 
a powerful man, a very athlete in figure, — and in his 
hand the knife with which he had been cutting up 
his dinner. It was a wholly unconscious act, the 
grasping of that formidable knife ; but it was 
enough for the captain, and he retreated into a cor- 
ner. Whereupon Curio stalked out of the room, 
passed with steady tread through the midst of the 
armed party that surrounded the door, went to the 
stable, threw himself on his horse, and saved his 
life. The sudden display of masterful courage and 
self-possession had taken the mean and wholly sub- 
servient minds of his pursuers by surprise; and 
before they recovered themselves, Curio was gone. 
After this second extraordinary escape, he reached 
the free mountain-land in safety, and was installed 
in the chair of Latin rhetoric at Basle, which was 
soon surrounded with scholars from various parts of 
Europe. The Christian hero was now held in such 
high esteem that the degree of Doctor of Laws was 
bestowed on him sitting instead of standing, an 
honour which had hitherto distinguished Bucer alone. 
But honours of all kinds were now pouring in upon 
the Protestant refugee. Kaiser Maximilian II. in- 



188 THE "tenth muse" invited to court. 

vited him to the University of Vienna ; but Basle 
was a better home than Vienna for the evening of 
such a life. The Duke of Savoy asked him to cross 
the Alps once more and establish himself at Turin ; 
but he was now too old to place himself in a city 
of whose galling stocks and high walls he had a 
lively recollection. Even the Pope of the day em- 
ployed an agent to tempt him back into his native 
land, by the bait of a good salary, and dowers for 
the young refugee maidens his daughters, who 
seemed to have followed their father to Switzerland ; 
his Holiness making the single stipulation that 
Doctor Celio Secondo Curio should henceforth ab- 
stain from promulgating his religious tenets. But 
possibly the carving-knife and the swift steed might 
not have availed a second time for his deliverance ; 
and Curio wisely preferred to remain in honoured 
exile, telling how great things the Lord had done 
for him, and teaching that salvation is by Christ 
alone. He died at Basle in 1569. It was worth 
while to go a little out of our main track, in order 
to follow the pathway of such a man as Curio, espe- 
cially as his course is singularly illustrative of his 
times. In such brief sketches as these, only some 
few of the representative features of the day can be 
selected; and the picture must of necessity be in- 
complete in its details. 

But it is high time to inquire how the young 
Ferrarese girl, the darling of the grave professors, 
who all flatter themselves that they have taken part 
in her education and in bringing out the wonder of 
the age, is getting on with her Greek and her rheto- 
ric. Duchess Renee had heard that a " tenth muse " 
had been added to the number of Mnemosyne's 
(laughters ; and she had sent for Olympia to court. 
The eldest daughter of the royal, or rather ducal, 



THE BRIGHT LITTLE COURT OF FERRARA. 189 

house, Anne of Este, was now a child of eight or 
nine years of age ; and the mother intended to make 
her a prodigy of learning. What so likely to aid 
her development as the stimulating companionship 
of such a girl as the gifted Olympia Morata ? Her 
father must give her up : she should live in the 
palace ; but he might still delight his heart by con- 
ducting her education ; and she should moreover 
share in all the instructions w r hich Anne of Este was 
receiving from many of the finest minds in Italy. 
It was too tempting an offer to be set aside ; and 
the beautiful Olympia became the pride and the 
favourite of the court, as she had been of Fulvio's 
little literary circle at home. 

The court of Ferrara was at this time one of the 
most intellectual in Europe. It was always sparkling 
with men of genius, while a refined taste and a 
high standard of mental culture prevailed in no 
common degree. But ever since Renee of France 
had been the ruling though secret influence, as wife 
of Duke Hercules II., men of a new stamp had been 
clustering silently about the court. Some had made 
their way over the mountains from France, scarcely 
drawing breath until they sat down to rest under the 
sheltering walls of Ferrara, or were admitted to kiss 
the hand of the daughter of their old King Louis XII. 
— the lady who, but for the Salique law, would 
have sat on the throne of France, instead of the 
brilliant but inconstant Francis I. Some had been 
newly taking counsel with the more brilliant and less 
inconstant sister of Francis, Margaret of Navarre,* 
reading the Scriptures in her presence, and discuss- 
ing deep points of theological inquiry, while they 
had refreshed themselves with her queenly hospi- 

* " The Pearl of Princesses, " " La Marguerite des Princesses," as 
she was called, the celebrated grandmother of Henry of Navarre. 



190 SECRET ASSEMBLIES IN THE PALACE. 

talities, and been charmed with the sparkle of her 
wit. Others were men from Venice, from Rome, 
from Naples, who had been pondering newly-dis- 
covered truth, to the health of their spiritual, but 
the imperilling of their natural, life. These were 
men differing in speech and nation, diverse in the 
minor shades of opinion, but with a common faith, 
a common hope, and a common danger. The in- 
stinct of self-preservation and the bonds of a living 
brotherhood had drawn them together. They recog- 
nised each other in a moment, and made common 
cause ; for though men of wide erudition, of multi- 
farious attainments, and of differing nationalities, 
they were believers in one Book. As each in his 
turn strayed in at the open gates of this noble little 
capital, he was beckoned by the Duchess into her 
secret assemblies in the palace, where, with her 
children around her, she listened to many a stirring 
tale of storms escaped or of breakers ahead ; and 
then one penniless scholar was made a tutor of a 
young prince or princess, and another received a 
salary as her secretary, while a lodging was found 
for a third who had newly been hunted like a par- 
tridge upon the mountains. In the mean time, the 
highest intellectual tone was preserved ; and court- 
ladies and pensioned gentlemen recreated themselves, 
after their devotional exercises, by reciting Plato or 
Cicero ; by discussing the merits of their own 
Ariosto or Bernardo Tasso ; by listening while Cle- 
ment Marot repeated his French hymns and psalms, 
or while " Charles Heppeville" disclosed the acute- 
ness of his masterly intellect, the might of his vast 
erudition, or the orderly procession of his thoughts. 
This " Monsieur Charles Heppeville " was none 
other than John Calvin himself, who during his 
brief stay occupied a small chamber in the southern 




The Duchess Renee's Secret Assemblies. 



Seepage 190. 



\ 



1 



DUCHESS RENEE AND HER FRIENDS. 191 

quadrangle of the palace, and who often ministered 
to the refugee church of Ferrara. 

Renee was a woman of a finely-cultivated mind, 
of a pleasing countenance, and of such singularly/ 
prepossessing manners as to make her one of the 
most attractive of women ; though there was some 
marked fault in her figure which deprived her of all 
claim to beauty. Her sympathy with the reformed 
doctrines and with those who held them was intense ; 
but she was always obliged to move in their behalf 
in a somewhat veiled manner, in consequence of the 
strong popish influences which prevailed over the 1 
minds of the ruling dukes. Alfonso I., who was 
still reigning when she came to Ferrara in 1527, 
was a bigoted Romanist. Her husband, who, on the 
death of his father in 1534, rose into power as 
Hercules II., was a man of taste and cultivation, but 
was wholly under the influence of the papacy. It 
was, therefore, under their secondary character, as 
" men of letters," that Eenee ventured to surround 
herself with such a noble company of Reformers. 
With her French friends she was soon obliged to 
part, because Hercules made a treaty with Pope and 
Emperor in 1536, one of whose secret provisions 
was to the effect that he must banish all the French 
inmates of his court. This was a heavy grief to 
Renee, and henceforth she was virtually alone in a 
strange land, her husband's heart stolen from her by 
the secret tamperings of papal agents. The Italian 
Reformers she still continued for a while to keep 
about her in their half-disguise as scholars and phi- 
losophers and poets. They knew they had pitched 
their tent on a thin volcanic crust; but as, for the 
sunny present, the vine and the olive were growing 
in pleasant luxuriance about them, the little com- 
pany of imperilled men sat down under their shadow 



192 OLYMPIA LECTURES IN THE ACADEMY. 

with great delight. The explosion came before very 
long, and the palm of martyrdom was all that re- 
mained to be gathered from their garden of plea- 
saunce. This was the court into which Olympia 
Morata was now ushered as half companion, half 
teacher to the young Anne of Este, and a confiding 
friendship soon sprang up between the two girls 
which survived all the tossings of their after-lives. 

Olympiads father had taught her recitation as a 
science, and she now recited the finest passages from 
the old classics of Greece and Rome in the private 
academy of Duchess Renee. Her accent was exqui- 
sitely correct, and her fine voice finely modulated, 
so that it was a rare treat for young courtiers as 
well as old professors to sit and listen to the girl as, 
with face all eloquent with her grand topics, she 
was now beautiful as a Grecian maiden, now stately 
and defiant as a Roman matron. At other times 
she lectured upon the great authors whose best 
passages she had recited ; and then, by voice, lan- 
guage, and changing countenance, she carried her 
thralled hearers with her to the grove of Academus, 
the Stoic Porch, or Epicurean Garden ; to the Roman 
forum, the villa at Tusculum, the haunted cave at 
CumaB, or the Elysian Fields of Baia. She used to 
introduce her lectures by a Latin prologue of her 
3wn composition, teeming with classic allusions, 
which piqued the memory of the old and stimulated 
the taste of the young. Curio wrote long afterwards 
a letter to a friend, which shows what an impression 
was made on even very gifted men by these extra- 
ordinary displays of female erudition. He says : 
" In the court of Ferrara, I myself have heard her 
declaiming in Latin, speaking in Greek, explaining 
the ' Paradoxes' of Cicero, and answering questions. 
She indeed reminded me of the renowned learned 



ANXIETY KEEPS HER HUMBLE. 193 

virgins among the ancients, with whom she might 
justly be compared." And at the time of which Curio 
speaks the girl was but sixteen ! We may imagine 
the exultation of her old Greek master, Chilian 
Sinapi, when the fair young genius presented him 
with an " Eulogy on Mutius Scaevola," written in 
Greek, accompanied by a letter to himself in the 
same tongue ; and what the pride of the faithful 
old friend, Calcagnini, when she gave him her de- 
fence of Cicero against the assaults of the Grecian 
revivalists — a work " full of wit and erudition," and 
" wonderfully pervaded by beauties and graces," as 
wrote her grey-haired patron. 

Olympia walked very wisely through the intri- 
cacies of court-life, and with a very graceful step 
too. It is a marvel that her young head did not 
become giddy with the scented fumes of incense 
which were perpetually enveloping her. A beauty, 
a wit, and a wonder, one would have expected to 
have seen her equilibrium wholly upset by adula- 
tion, and that she would have displayed the airs of 
that most gaseous inflation, a blue lady. But the 
solemn questions which were debated around her, 
in the privacy of the Duchess Renee's apartments 
and within the closed doors of her father's house, 
— questions which she felt she would soon have to 
answer to the satisfaction of her own conscience, — 
tended to steady the youthful head. Men whom she 
honoured for their integrity, and admired for their 
learning, were continually coming to Ferrara in hot 
haste, living there for a brief space in watchful 
anxiety, and departing in terror at the promptings 
of some friendly warning or the menace of some open 
foe. She felt that her heart had taken its side with 
the persecuted, and that her spring morning of fame 
must soon run out its golden hours. " I shall soon 

N 



194 THE FATHER DIES. 

be as one of them," thought Olympia, as she saw 
one after another of the members of the refugee 
community driven out of Ferrara ; and the clouds 
soon began to gather over herself. When she was 
twenty-two years of age, the good father, Fulvio 
Morato, died — for a wonder, in outward quietness 
as well as inward peace — in his own home, sur- 
rounded by his family, and with a " good hope 
through grace." Olympia says : " He departed after 
much suffering, with singular faith in God, from 
this world of pollution and trouble." She had left 
the court in order to wait upon her dying father, 
whose proud affection for his beautiful and gifted 
child had been such a prominent feature in his life. 
And so the opportunity of her absence, in discharge 
of the holiest duty of affection, was seized by the 
envious to poison the mind of Duke Hercules, and 
even of the Duchess also, against the Princess Anne's 
governess. A young girl could not be called " The 
Tenth Muse," and fill all Italy with rumours of her 
keen wit and distinguished beauty, without causing 
an opposition current to set in. We have not been 
made acquainted with the exact nature of the calum- 
nies ; but that they were only calumnies no one 
affects to deny. It would appear that an evil-minded 
man, Jerome Balsec by name, who wore the cowl of 
a monk or the gown of a Protestant preacher, as 
best suited the convenience of the hour and the 
fashions of the place, — whether Paris, Geneva, or 
Ferrara, — had prejudiced the minds of her patrons 
against Olympia. That her Protestant principles 
were the true ground of Balsec's hatred may be 
clearly inferred. However, when the tears were 
dried after her father's death, and she was ready 
to resume her court-duties, Olympia found that 
already the flickering sunshine of court favour had 



IN DISGRACE AT COURT, SHE GRACES HER HOME. 195 

passed away and left her in the shadows. And now 
came out the strength of her character. Instead 
of pining for sunlight, she made the best of the 
darkness, and devoted her large soul to the per- 
formance of such humble duties as were most suited 
to the dimness of the hour — cultivating in the narrow 
garden-plot of home-life such good fruits and cheery 
flowers as ever flourish best in a sheltered spot 
Lucrezia, the widow, was now wholly broken ir 
health, and Olympia managed the humble house- 
hold; and now see the " Muse," instead of binding 
her fair brow with the poetic garland, carefully 
trying to make the two ends meet of the household 
economy ; and that was no light task. Besides this, 
she was giving his education to a young brother, and 
making her sisters some of the most accomplished 
women in Italy. In the midst of these womanly 
occupations, she now and then resumed the muse's 
wreath, though only for holiday wear ; and then a 
Greek poem would flow harmoniously from her pen, 
or she wrote letters of classic elegance to learned 
friends who were eager to receive them. It is fine 
to see a young lady like Olympia Morata suddenly 
divested of her court-dresses and wearing home-spun 
with yet better grace; leaving the luxurious ban- 
quets of the palace, and turning to the home-made 
bread of severe thrift. But the secret of this digni- 
fied adaptation to her altered circumstances is to be 
found in the deepening of her religious character. 
A decided change had passed over her as she stood 
by the death-bed of her father, who had departed 
in the full faith of Christ; and the force of her 
decision now became manifest. She was at this 
time daily studying the Scriptures, as yielding better 
wisdom than Plato ever dreamed of, or Socrates ever 
attained; and so, while men pitied the disgraced 



196 SHE VISITS A FELLOW-BELIEVER IN PRISON. 

favourite or shunned the suspected Protestant, she 
was growing in grace, and daily becoming more 
lovely, because reflecting the love of Christ. It is 
said that there are plants which develop fastest in 
an atmosphere charged with electricity and storm, 
and so was it with the fair flower of Ferrara. " Had 
I remained longer at court," she wrote to her firm 
friend Curio, " it would have been all over with me 
and my salvation ; for never while I was there could 
I attain to anything exalted or divine, nor could I 
read the books either of the Old Testament or the 
New." 

Thus two or three years were quietly passed in 
striking deep root downward and bearing fair fruit 
upward. Olympia had even sympathy to spare for 
a poor victim of papal wrong who was pining in one 
of the dungeons of Ferrara. A young man, called 
Fannio, had been arrested at Faenza for promul- 
gating his heretical opinions. Under the pressure 
of adverse power, and the worse torture of his wife's 
tears, he had recanted. But, like Jerome of Prague, 
he was much more miserable in his dishonest safety 
than in his honest peril, and had withdrawn the re- 
cantation. A relapsed heretic was always in worse 
condition than one in the first stage of his malady; 
and Fannio was again seized and brought in chains 
to Ferrara. While awaiting the finishing processes 
of official condemnation, he was visited in his dun- 
geon by Olympia Morata, who had come to offer 
the sympathy of the unfortunate ; that cup of cold 
water, passed from the hand of one disciple to that 
of another, which never loses its reward. The mar- 
tyr was now " strong and of a good courage," and 
his exhortations were words of power. When his 
wife and sister visited him, and tried the old elo- 
quence of tears and prayers, he said, " Let it suffice 



A YOUNG GERMAN STUDENT. 197 

you that for your sakes I have once denied my 
Saviour. Had I then the knowledge which, by the 
grace of God, I have gained since my fall, I should 
not have yielded to your entreaties. Go home in 
peace. " For two years he was left to languish in 
that dungeon, until, in the year 1550, the reigning 
Pope, Julius III., ordered him for execution. So 
much sympathy had been called out by Fannio's 
case, and he had won so many hearts in his prison- 
life by his gentleness of manner and fervour of faith, 
that a very early hour in the morning was deemed 
safest for the martyrdom. He was first strangled 
(for that was the quietest mode), and then burnt in 
the market-place of Ferrara ; and the ashes of 
almost the first martyr for the Protestant faith in 
Italy were given to the winds. But, as usual, they 
brought forth an abundant harvest after their kind. 
But there was one whose honest eyes had for 
some time been watching Olympia Morata with 
silent admiration. Andreas Grunthler was a native 
of Schweinfurt, a free imperial city of Franconia, 
belted with ancient walls. Andreas belonged to a 
good fomily, and he had inherited a patrimony which 
made him independent. But he was earnestly de- 
voted to the profession of medicine ; and the young 
German student had come to Ferrara to attend the 
lectures of his fellow-townsmen Johann and Chilian 
Sinapi, to finish his medical studies, and to obtain 
his degree. He could not frequent the houses of 
the professors without hearing marvellous stories 
about the gifts and graces of their favourite pupil ; 
but the young man listened further, and he heard 
things which much more closely touched his sym- 
pathies. He found that the fair scholar was a be- 
liever in the reformed doctrines, and that she walked 
by their rule ; then she must be a sister in the faith 



198 the "muse" is wooed and won. 

which he loved, for he too was a fervent reformer. 
She was beautiful and had been extravagantly wor- 
shipped in court circles and literary coteries ; and yet 
not the shadow of a cloud had ever passed across her 
fair name. True, she was now in disgrace, and had 
been summarily dismissed from her attendance in 
the ducal household ; but he discovered she was only 
the victim of jealous intrigue, and all that was found 
against her was concerning the law of her God. So 
the German drew nearer in order to command a better 
stand-point for silent observation ; and then he saw 
the quiet beauty of Olympia's home-life — saw how 
meekly she bowed her fair head to affliction, and yet 
how nobly she wrestled with hardship — saw how the 
young Muse who had been accustomed to lecture on 
Greek poetry before an intellectual court, while the 
first professors in Italy held their breath lest they 
should miss a single musical intonation, was now 
bending her whole mind to the education of a little 
brother, waiting tenderly on a sick mother, and care- 
fully studying how she might provide honest bread 
for a hungry household. And so, without further 
parley, the German surrendered his heart to the 
Italian. Grunthler was a good scholar, and subjects 
of common interest were not wanting between them. 
The literary talk led to religious converse, and the 
religious converse glided on into yet tenderer lan- 
guage. So the fair scholar was wooed and won; 
and in her twenty-third year, Olympia Morata be- 
came the wife of Andreas Grunthler. In announcing 
her marriage to her old friend Curio, then happily 
installed in the Humanity chair at the Basle Uni- 
versity, she says : " He who is the best Father of 
orphans did not allow me to remain more than two 
years in this calamitous state ; for, influenced by 
Him, Andreas Grunthler, a German, greatly skilled 



ANDREAS TRAVELS IN QUEST OF FORTUNE. 199 

in philosophy and medicine, loved me, and, in spita 
of the Prince's displeasure and my forlorn estate, 
made me his wife." It was a marriage of the 
strongest affections on both sides. But Ferrara was 
now no place for a Protestant physician. Even the 
favoured Johann Sinapi was forced to close his long 
service to the house of Este, and found it safer to 
live under the shadow of the Prince-bishop of Wiirz- 
burg than beneath the now frowning walls of Fer- 
rara. And so Andreas, leaving his bride with her 
sick mother until he could find a fitting home for 
her on the other side of the Alps, set forth to dis- 
cover his fortunes. His aspirations pointed at a 
professorship in one of the German universities ; but 
he found distrust, dissatisfaction, and unsettlement 
wherever he went. Charles V. was at this time 
vigorously enforcing that obnoxious measure which 
was called the Interim, a temporary system of paci- 
fication which compromised everybody and satisfied 
no one; which aggravated the Protestants by its 
pretended liberality in measures, but its real Popery 
in principle; and exasperated the Papists by its 
humiliating concessions to the Reformers, and yet 
its " profane " encroachments upon the spiritual 
rights of Holy Church. Compromises rarely satisfy ; 
and the steel-gloved hand of Charles was not the 
one to feel with delicate touch the fevered pulse of 
society, or to hold out the specific for the cure of its 
sore sicknesses. Like the times, Charles himself 
was enduring his own sore sickness. He was already 
tortured with those fierce attacks of the gout which 
in a few more years broke down the iron of his 
frame, bent his will, impaired his power of thought, 
and prepared him to sigh for the convent-life in the 
lonely valley of Estremadura. And Philip was now 
making that solemn progress from Madrid to the 



200 COUNT FUGGER AND HIS GOLD. 

Low Countries which set the heart of a whole people 
against the deep, dark, unbending, unsmiling prince 
of twenty-one, and showed them what they might 
expect when he should reign in his father's stead — 
when the father's " whips " should drop from his 
aching hand, and the son should shake his " scor- 
pions " over their heads. 

The young physician had the address to gain the 
fair promises of several powerful patrons in the 
course of his long tour in search of a professorship. 
Charles's brother, Ferdinand of Hungary, was gra- 
cious, and Johann Sinapi was energetic in forwarding 
the business of his young townsman, and the rich 
Count Fugger of Augsburg made golden promises. 
It was that Count Fugger whose ships were plough- 
ing the eastern and the western seas, bringing home 
the red gold of Ophir and the new-found wealth of 
the Spaniards' blighted paradise; who was constantly 
drawing up precious metals from the finest mines in 
Europe besides; and whose " house" was perpetu- 
ally propping the shaking throne of some king or 
kaiser with bags of gold. The princely Fuggers 
were but descendants of a weaver in a village near 
Augsburg ; and yet when war was to be made, or 
treaties signed, or friendships bought, ministers of 
state must hold a little preparatory talk with the 
weaver's sons in the " bank parlour " of Augsburg, 
or over the counter of the " branch bank " in some 
other continental city. It was no marvel that the 
grateful Maximilian had bestowed patents of nobility 
on the family, or that he had graciously permitted 
them to coin their own money when it was to be so 
useful to himself. In the following century there 
were five families of Fuggers ruling the " money 
markets " of Europe, and forty-seven counts and 
countesses of the empire were all weaving and wear- 



OLYMPIA GOES TO GERMANY. 201 

ing their own cloth-of-gold and cloth-of-silver, so 
swift had sped the golden shuttle of the old Augs- 
burg weaver. A few years before Andreas came to 
Augsburg under such promising patronage, the head 
of the house had entertained Kaiser Charles and his 
suite for the space of a whole year without crippling 
his means ; and he had moreover flung Charles's bond 
for half a million of crowns into a cinnamon fire, 
and burnt it before the monarch's wondering eyes. 
This was magnificent ostentation indeed. It was of 
him that the Emperor had said, in referenee to the 
treasury at Paris, " I have a burgher at Augsburg 
who could buy it all with his own gold." 

Supported by the buoyancy of hope, Andreas 
at length returned to Ferrara to fetch his wife. Then 
followed a sorrowful parting from the mother and 
the fair sisters; but not from the boy Emilio, the 
brother of eight years, whose training had been 
Olympia's especial charge, and whom she now car- 
ried with her over the Alps in order to pursue his 
education. There was a noticeable man of letters, 
George Hermann, councillor to Ferdinand, who en- 
tertained the husband and wife and the little brother 
fur months at his princely Augsburg residence, or 
at his country house hard by. Bat we hear no 
more about Count Fugger's large promises, and no 
fire of cinnamon seems to have been lighted to warm 
the southern lady. In 1550 the travellers arrived at 
the old city of Augustus, which has borne his name 
all the way down from the twelfth year before 
Christ. In this same year 1550, Augsburg was 
transacting a little romance of its own, other than 
the golden legend of the house of Fugger. Philip- 
pina Welser was the daughter of a plain but rich 
burgher of the place. Though not rivals of the 
Fuggers, the Welsers were great moneyed people, and 



202 THE "ROSE OF AUGSBURG." 

their name became widely known in Europe. Philip- 
pina was held to be the most perfectly beautiful 
woman of her times. During the sitting of the Diet 
of 1550, the Archduke Ferdinand, then only nine- 
teen, as he was riding through the streets of the city, 
had caught a glimpse of the "Hose of Augsburg," 
as she was called ; and he was so captivated by her 
extraordinary beauty at the first, and then by the 
loveliness of her mind and the fair purity of her 
character, that the heir of the proud house of Haps- 
burg made Philippina his wife. So he transplanted 
the " Rose of Augsburg " to bloom in the garden of 
his own archducal castle of Ambras, close to the 
capital of the Tyrol. Of course, very grand was the 
indignation of Ferdinand the father, king of the 
Romans, king of Hungary and Bohemia, brother of 
the great Emperor of the West, and future Kaiser of 
Germany. It was a frightful mesalliance! But 
notwithstanding the heavy ebullitions of Hapsburg 
rage, and the sullen endurance of Hapsburg impla- 
cability, the domestic happiness of Schloss Ambras 
was profound and unbroken. For thirty quiet years 
the " Rose " continued to fill the atmosphere around 
the Innsbruck home with the fragrance of her 
virtues and her graces. For the first eight humi- 
liating years, the haughty Ferdinand refused to 
acknowledge his plebeian daughter-in-law. But at 
the end of that time she succeeded in penetrating, 
for her children's sake, not her own, into the im- 
perial presence, leading her two boys by the hand. 
The hard Emperor was fairly conquered. The 
beautiful matron was instantly received into favour, 
and her two sons were made margraves. Her 
memory is still living, not only in the bowers of 
Schloss Ambras, but in the silence of the " Silver 
Chapel" within the cathedral at Innsbruck, where 
her graceful figure reclines, in white marble, beside 



THE LONG-SOUGHT PROFESSORSHIP. 203 

the stately effigy of her true-hearted husband. 
These side-lights, let in through the storied windows 
of contemporaneous history, help to illuminate our 
plain biographies, even when they have little to do 
with the actual progress of events. 

Under the protecting roof of the good Councillor 
Hermann, Olympia resumed her literary labours, 
and taught the young brother Emilio, while the 
husband was enabled to repay their host for his 
kindly hospitalities by restoring him from dangerous 
illness. Then came a visit to Wiirzburg, and to the 
faithful old Ferrara friend Johann Sinapi, now head 
physician to the prince-bishop. Here, in the fine 
old city, amidst overhanging houses and peaked 
gables, or else on the grand citadel of Marienburg 
towering above the town, have reigned for a thou- 
sand years the prince- bishops of Wiirzburg. Next 
to Schweinfurt, the native town of Grunthler, whither 
the doctor was bidden by the senate in order that he 
might wait upon the health of a large body of 
Spanish troops whom Charles had sent into winter- 
quarters. A much more tempting offer was now 
made to Andreas, which closely tested the alle- 
giance of the young physician and his wife to the 
faith which they had deliberately chosen for the 
rule of their life. The long-desired professorship 
was at last presented, through the interest of Coun- 
cillor Hermann with his master Ferdinand, king of 
the Romans. This was the chair of Medicine in the 
Academy of Linz, on the Danube, the finely-planted 
capital of Upper Austria; and rare advantages were 
promised by Ferdinand to the fortunate occupant of 
that chair. Here ambition would be gratified to the 
full, and fortune and favour secured. Andreas was 
also to have the fine appointment at the Austrian 
court of chief physician to Ferdinand. But now an 
anxious consideration troubled the minds of the hus- 



204 NO COMPROMISES. 

band and wife; would they or would they not be 
allowed the free exercise of their religion there in 
Austrian Linz, under a patron of the house of Haps- 
burg? Compromises they would not consent to; 
and unless they might openly confess their loyalty 
to the King of kings, Andreas would stay and wait 
upon the sick Spanish soldiers, who were chafing and 
pining for the south, in their cold winter-quarters at 
Schweinfurt. And so, in order to discover what 
would be required of them, under the hard rule of 
the Interim, Olympia wrote to the son of the Coun- 
cillor Hermann, and these are some of her noble 
words: " You are not ignorant, I presume, that we 
are soldiers of Christ, and that we are bound to his 
service by an oath so sacred, that, were we un- 
faithful to it, we should bring upon ourselves ever- 
lasting destruction. Such are the majesty and the 
greatness of the Prince under whom we serve, that 
He not only has the power of life and death over his 
soldiers, but can even consign them to everlasting 
punishment ; nor will He suffer any of them for a 
single moment to be off duty. Therefore we ought 
to be especially careful lest, from fear of worldly 
enemies, we should cast away the shield of faith, or 
lest we rashly bring ourselves into perilous positions, 
by which we should sin against Grod." And then she 
entreats to be told whether those who did not attend 
mass, and who worshipped God according to their 
conscience, were persecuted at Linz : "for it is our 
steadfast resolve openly to profess the pure Christian 
faith, and not to conform to the worship of a per- 
verted religion. I beseech and entreat you to grant 
us information in this matter. Farewell." The 
answer was such as might be expected from an 
Austrian university : "True; they would be required 
to conform." So the tempting bait was rejected 
without a second thought, and Andreas still attended 



HAPPY LIFE AT SCHWEINFUKT. 205 

upon the sick Spaniards, while Olympia taught 
Emilio his Latin and Greek, and spoke consolation 
in her soft Italian accent to the poor and the dying. 
In the intervals of these occupations Olympia was 
rendering many of the Psalms into Greek verse — 
Homeric verse and Sapphic ; a very scholarly exercise 
for the Muse of Ferrara, but of no possible advantage 
to any one else, and a disfavour to the simple beauty 
and dignity of the text. But this undertaking was 
thought so much of by her literary admirers that, 
together with some Latin dialogues, they were called 
her " golden works." She was already much es- 
teemed in the home of her adoption, though to her 
taste Germany must have been rude, and its lan- 
guage rough and strong. One of her biographers 
says that " she found a great many patrons, friends, 
and favourers at Schweinfurt, and began to pass 
her life sweetly and comfortably." She was living 
in the midst of a little Protestant society, some of 
whose members had been accustomed to join in the 
secret assemblies of the Reformed Church at Fer- 
rara. They now had the services of a Protestant 
minister, and kept closely banded together as a 
little community dwelling in the heart of an enemy's 
country. The day's routine was closed in the 
Grunthler household by reading the Scriptures and 
singing one of those fine stirring hymns of Luther 
which still swells the matins and vespers of Protestant 
Germany : and then the learned couple used to in- 
dulge their somewhat pedantic tastes by chanting 
Olympia' s Greek Psalms, which her proud husband 
had set to music. But these melodies were soon 
drowned in the harsh notes of war. 

The turbulent Albert of Brandenburg, who, though 
he professed the Lutheran tenets, was in reality in- 
fluenced only by the shifting creed of selfish ambi- 
tion, was harrying the country at the head of his 



206 ALBERT OF BRANDENBURG. 

" free companions." His elastic creed now held him 
to the side of the Emperor, now to that of the con- 
federate princes. Wherever aught was to be gained, 
aught done or dared, there was Albert of Branden- 
burg. He seemed to have delivered himself over to 
the very madness of ambition, revelling in war for 
the sake of its spoil, and seizing everything on which 
he could lay his hand, in the hope that when it should 
be wrested from him, as was likely enough, he might 
still be able to clutch some shreds of territory in his 
grasp. He was secretly aided by the profoundly 
dissimulating Emperor, who saw in this sanguine 
enthusiast in selfishness the only rival whom he 
could work against the brilliant and successful 
Maurice of Saxony, Charles was playing a deep 
game ; Maurice a deeper ; while Albert, always on 
the surface, dashing and daring, with the courage of 
a lion but the code of a bandit, was now devastating 
the territories of the Bishops of Bamberg and Wurz- 
burg. The imperial chamber met in high displea- 
sure ; Albert was attacking the wrong people ; and 
he was placed at the ban of the empire. A confe- 
deracy was formed against the prince of adventurers, 
and Maurice of Saxony was placed at its head. It is 
no wonder that the prince-bishops were exasperated ; 
for Albert had exacted more than 500,000 crowns 
from him of Wiirzburg, and twenty towns and lord- 
ships from the mitred lord of Bamberg. So for- 
midable was he as an enemy, and so unmanageable 
as a friend, that Yoltaire calls him the Alcibiades of 
Germany ; and Sleidan, in his history of the Refor- 
mation, shows that it was his normal state to be 
out at large, burning towns and villages, and levying 
" black mail." It was now April, 1553 ; and Albert 
had intrenched himself with his army of outlaws and 
free marauders in the imperial city of Schweinfurt, 
whose position was finely adapted for defence. The 



THE PHYSICIAN FALLS SICK. 207 

united armies of the two Bishops, of the Elector of 
Saxony, of the Duke of Brunswick, and the city of 
Nuremberg, under the accomplished generalship of 
Maurice, besieged the town. Andreas and Olympia 
were within the place, pursuing their peaceable call- 
ing, when Albert of Brandenburg took forcible pos- 
session ; and there they endured frightful hardships 
for the space of fourteen months. The siege was 
strait ; provisions scanty ; famine bred a pestilence 
which made its victims insane with anguish, and 
which destroyed half the population. The allies were 
incessantly bombarding from without; the " free 
companions " were perpetually entering the houses 
and exacting food and contributions within ; but, 
more mad than any sufferer from pestilence, Albert 
of Brandenburg still held the place by unconquered 
force of will. Andreas Grunthler and his family 
lived down in a wine-cellar for protection from the 
cannon ; and hence the physician used to issue on 
his mission of mercy amongst the stricken of the 
pestilence, while Olympia divided their spare meals 
with the starving sufferers in the streets above them. 
But after months of devoted labour, Andreas fell 
sick; he had caught the epidemic from the victims 
to whom he was ministering. All his medicines 
were exhausted, and no remedy remained to him but 
the tender watching s of his wife and the unfailing 
resource of prayer. For days the physician lay at 
the door of death : but it did not open to him. ; there 
was more for him to do on this side the threshold ; 
and while Olympia watched and prayed, Andreas 
turned his face back again towards the living. This 
was in the ninth month of the siege, and there were 
five more months to come. Prayer was continually 
offered by the little Reformed Church of Schweinfurt 
on behalf of their beloved physician ; and Olympia 
wrote at this time to her constant friend of the happy 



208 ALBERT BEATEN BY THE DYING MAURICE. 

Ferrara days and of the subsequent days of grief, the 
Lady Lavinia della Rovere : " In all our evils we 
have been sustained by the solace of the Word of 
God ; and because we have God always present with 
us, we trust that in his own good time He will set 
us free/' Fourteen months had been lived through, 
when at last even the indomitable Albert found him- 
self foiled by the united forces of famine, pestilence, 
and the sword ; and so at dead of night, leading with 
him the wreck of his mutinous army, he marched 
out of a ruined city, and succeeded in reaching the 
open country. Maurice of Saxony and Henry Duke 
of Brunswick were soon on his track. A great fight 
ensued at Sieverhausen, and Albert was beaten, but 
not yet conquered ; while the costly victory was pur- 
chased by the allies by the death of Maurice of Saxony, 
one of the most extraordinary personages that an 
era of wonders had produced. He was but thirty- 
two years old at the time of his death. With small 
means, but with too elastic a code of moral principles 
which allowed him large scope for most unjustifiable 
intrigue, he checkmated Charles when he had the 
whole game of Europe beneath his hand, and gave 
back to Germany her civil and religious liberties. 
His schemes were so profoundly laid that he out- 
raged his friends and deceived the most subtle of his 
foes, while he was steadily pursuing his remote but 
momentous objects ; and when at length he brought 
his plans to the surface, and showed that all his 
lines met in perfect precision, the injured friends 
were as much astonished at the boon which he had 
secured for them as the deceived foes were exaspe- 
rated with the address which had travestied all their 
counsels. But this is not true Christian heroism. 
The Christian is not at liberty to assume the disguise 
of worldly wisdom in order to walk safely through 
the enemy's country, and then throwing aside the 



Maurice's lax code. 209 

convenient cloak, appear in his rightful clothing.* 
He must always wear the livery of his own Master ; 
for he " cannot serve God and mammon/' Maurice 
knew himself well enough to feel that, with his 
masterly power of resolve, his address in masking 
his designs, and his startling rapidity of execution 
when the time was full for development, he was by 
far the most skilled of all the leaders of the Pro- 
testant cause ; he saw that to be powerful for Pro- 
testantism he must dissimulate with Charles ; and 
therefore, in order to widen the base of his opera- 
tions, he robbed his cousin John Frederic the Mag- 
nanimous of his rightful electorate. But that the 
grandeur of the end will never sanctify the injustice 
of the means is an old axiom in Christian ethics 
which nothing can shake ; and when Maurice re- 
ceived the pistol-bullet on the victorious field of 
Sieverhausen, and lingered for two painful days, his 
death-bed would not be the smoother because he 
could count six years of electoral dignity, while for 
five of these his noble cousin was rusting in captivity. 

And what of the still more unscrupulous and more 
selfish Albert of Brandenburg? With his usual 
daring courage he rallied his broken forces, soldiers 
of fortune like himself; was again beaten by Henry 
of Brunswick ; again fled and again fought ; was 
pursued by the ban of the imperial chamber ; and 
at last fought his way into France, where he died 
some years later in enforced exile. Truly ambition 
is not a happy inmate in the " house of life." 

Eeturn we to Schweinfurt. While Maurice was 
dying, and Albert was retreating with his face to the 
foe, fighting inch by inch as he fled, the episcopal 
forces marched into the town. They were under en- 
gagements to retire as soon as Albert, their sole 
enemy, should yield. But the passions of war were 
too hot, after the friction of a fourteen months' siege, 

o 



210 SCHWEINFURT IN FLAMES. 

to cool in a moment ; and they first delivered the 
unoffending town to plunder, and then most wickedly 
set it on fire. The inhabitants, who had been over- 
joyed at the midnight retreat of Albert of Branden- 
burg, now found themselves in yet worse estate. The 
fiery triumph of the bishops was more consuming than 
the obstinate defence of the outlaw. The flames 
were raging up and down the streets, the people 
rushing with wild cries from their houses, when 
Olympia, with her young brother Emilio and her 
husband, left their burning home with all its little 
property — worst of all, the precious books and manu- 
scripts, their best wealth. To save bare life was the 
only thought of the moment ; arid presently the 
hungry flames swallowed up everything they owned 
in the world. There was a church still standing, and 
they hurried with crowds of other townsfolk to the 
trusted sanctuary; for the word ran through the 
multitude that the soldiery would spare the church. 
But as they were hastening through the streets, a 
soldier, moved by some impulse of pity, bade them 
leave the town instantly or they would perish. To 
one of the gates, then, they hurried ; and all who 
had sought asylum in the church were buried under 
its ashes. It was a signal interposition of Providence 
which saved Olympia and her two companions from 
a dreadful fate ; and as such she records it with 
grateful praise. But a fresh distress intercepted them 
before they could reach the open country. A band 
of soldiers met and stripped the fugitives, leaving to 
each but a single under-garment. This was suffi- 
ciently dreadful to a young woman of Olympia's 
refinement ; but even this was forgotten when she 
perceived that the brutal soldiers were dragging her 
husband away as their prisoner. And now her tears 
and prayers broke out with such eloquence that the 
soldiers, moved by the agony of the beautiful foreign 



LIFE SAVED, AND NAUGHT BESIDE. 211 

lady, released the husband, and the little party 
hastened onward in their wretched plight. " I 
could easily have borne the loss of all beside/' 
she wrote to her sister; "I could not have borne 
the loss of my dearest husband. But God restored 
him at my entreaty." Whither were they to go? 
The world was before them. To Hamelburg, then, 
a village three leagues off. The road was sharp 
and flinty, and Olympia's feet were bare and bleed- 
ing. She was sinking from exhaustion ; and now 
she was saying, a I must lie down and die; " now 
pleading, " Lord, if Thou wouldst have me live, 
bid thine angels carry me, for I can go no further." 
There was a poor countrywoman who looked upon 
her in pity, and brought out a gown to cover her, as 
she dragged herself wearily along. At length the 
nine miles were accomplished. " I looked," said 
Olympia afterwards, " with my dishevelled hair, my 
borrowed rags, and bleeding feet, like the queen of 
the beggars." Queenly she would look to the last. 
Afraid of compromising themselves with the terrible 
bishop, the village-people of Hamelburg drove out 
the fugitives after but four days' rest. In another 
town they were seized ; for the bishop had given 
stringent orders to put to death all fugitives from 
Schweinfurt ! She says, iC If ever I prayed heartily 
in my life, it was then;" and after a season of anxious 
detention, they were released. The worst was past. 
Sympathy, that sweet daughter of holy religion, 
began to visit the outcasts in their affliction. Fifteen 
gold crowns came to them from some nobleman, to 
them wholly unknown; a timely relief. Clothes 
were sent by hands unseen ; and Olympia writes, 
" God began to look favourably on those whom He 
had long seen meet so variously and severely to try ; 
still, in the midst of judgment, remembering mercy." 
They had now reached the dominions of some Pro- 



212 THE PROFESSORSHIP AT LAST. 

testant princes. The Count of Reineck " courteously 
entreated and lodged them " at Furstenburg. A 
happy asylum was offered to them at Erbach, in 
whose narrow vale, guarded by battlemented rocks, 
Eberard Count of Erbach held his little court. 
Olympia was by this time sick of a fever ; but the 
pious countess watched by her bedside, ministered to 
her with her own hand, and clothed her from her 
own private wardrobe when she arose from her ill- 
ness. So the pitying peasant-woman's ragged gown 
and Olympiads one linen garment were exchanged 
for the dresses of a court ; and old visions of Ferrara 
must have floated back before the brightening eyes 
of the exiled maid-of-honour. These noble families, 
amongst whom Andreas and Olympia were now 
resting, were people with whom religion was not a 
mere party-name, or Protestantism a war-cry ; they 
feared God, wrought righteousness, and made the 
Bible their book of laws. It is a refreshment to 
come upon such households of faith, in our dreary 
walk through the history of the times. 

While the emigrants were reposing in. this last- 
mentioned peaceable habitation, the glad news came 
that Andreas Grunthler was appointed to the profes- 
sorship of medicine at the University of Heidelberg. 
The chair had been obtained for him through the 
zeal of their host, the Count of Erbach, who had 
interest and relationship with the Elector Palatine. 
A vista into court-life was again opened before 
Olympia by the offer of an appointment as lady of 
honour to the Electress Palatine; but, ubi cor, ibi 
oculus; and as her "heart" was set on things 
above, so was her " eye " thither directed, and she 
turned away from the flattering view. To Heidel- 
berg they removed in August, 1554. At that beau- 
tiful city of the Neckar, peace descended, dove-like, 
upon the worn wayfarers. The old friend Johann 



THE TATTERED FORTUNES MENDED. 213 

Sinapi sent them offerings of books from Wiirzburg ; 
the old friend Curio sent literary gifts from Basle ; 
the leading booksellers of Basle and Frankfurt, and 
many other admiring and sympathising friends, for- 
warded contributions from their shelves to repair the 
wretched waste of war; and Andreas and Olympia 
had again the germ of a library. Olympia was 
beginning to remember that all Italy had not long 
ago rung with her name as " The Tenth Muse." But 
while the husband was preparing his medical lectures 
for the Hall of Heidelberg, the Muse, with right 
womanly skill, was setting to work to mend their 
ruined resources and to gather about them the rudi- 
ments of home comfort. It was beginning the world 
afresh ; but so skilful was she in creating household 
wealth, and in patching and repairing tattered for- 
tunes, that before long she was able even to send 
aid to the- poor sufferers who were smoothing the 
ashes-heaps of Schweinfurt and building new homes 
with its cinders. 

Though now peaceful and prosperous, in a settled 
home, her husband at his beloved studies, and the 
boy Emilio reviving his forgotten Greek by her side, 
Olympia's health never recovered from the rude 
shocks it had received in the siege, the sack, and the 
flight. A series of sharp illnesses succeeded each 
other in the following year, 1555. Consumption 
was busy under the hectic bloom of her beauty. She 
wrote to Curio, "I am every day more and more 
wasted by disease, and am scarcely one hour free 
from fever. Thus are we chastened by the Lord that 
we may not perish with the world." In October she 
wrote her ]ast letter to her " dearest father Curio : " 
" Farewell ! and do not distress yourself when you 
hear of my death ; for I know that I shall be vic- 
torious at the last, and am desirous to depart and be 
with Christ. I send you such of the poems as I 



214 DEATH OF OLYMPIA. 

have been able to write out from memory since th3 
destruction at Schweinfurt; all my other writings 
have perished. Again, farewell." When some one 
asked the dying believer if she were assailed by any 
doubts, she replied : " During the last seven years 
the devil has been endeavouring by every means to 
draw me from the true faith ; but now, as if he had 
lost all his weapons, he has never made his appear- 
ance, nor have I now any other feeling but perfect 
serenity, and the peace of Christ." In this holy calm, 
on the 25th of October, 1555, before she had quite 
completed her twenty-ninth year, died Olympia 
Morata, for it is by her maiden name that she is always 
remembered.* Her heart-broken husband wrote to 
Curio : " Behold, I pray you, in how many ways God 
afflicts me ; how, after the destruction of my native 
town, the plunder of my property, and the death 
of my friends and of nearly all my neighbours, He 
has now taken away from me my dearest wife. 
While she yet remained with me, all other losses 
seemed light in comparison ; but this, the greatest 
calamity of all, like the tenth wave following the 
others, completely overwhelms me. I cannot tell 
why, but the remembrance of the very sweet and 
happy life we lived together yields me no consola- 
tion. She lived with me not quite five years ; but 
never have I seen a soul more sincere and upright, 
nor a deportment more virtuous and holy. What 
shall I say of her singular piety and learning ? I do 
not think it needful to praise her to you, both because 
she is well known to you, and because I do not wish 
to extol what was my own" 

Olympia was laid in a chapel of the Heidelberg 
Cathedral; and in less than a month afterwards the 
stone was again lifted to place Andreas by her side. 

* See an interesting memoir of this accomplished woman in the 
Ladies of the 'Reformation, 



ANDKEAS AND EMILIO SOON FOLLOW HER. 215 

He died of the plague which had been carrying off 
numbers of the inhabitants of Heidelberg; but he 
would not quit the place, choosing rather to stay and 
wait upon the sick and dying. In this pious employ 
he found the best occupation for his grief- stricken 
soul. He was a man of faith and prayer ; but the 
sweet grace of resignation was less conspicuous in 
him than in Olympia. A few more weeks, and that 
unresting stone in the chapel was again raised to 
receive the boy Ernilio, aged about thirteen. So they 
all lay down together to find the welcome sleep, and 
nearly at the same time ; the warfare accomplished, 
the wayfaring over, and the inheritance sure. In the 
succeeding year, a monument, with allegorical carv- 
ings and a Latin inscription, was erected to their 
memory. The learned friends of Olympia bewailed 
her in characteristic Greek and Latin odes; while 
the town of Schweinfurt, poor but grateful, rebuilt 
at the public expense the house in which the gifted 
wife of their Andreas Grunthler had lived for three 
years amongst her husband's people, and engraved 
upon it a Latin inscription to this effect : 

"Although this house may be humble and lowly, 
Yet its distinguished inmate gave it distinction and fame." 

The faithful Curio gathered together as many of 
Olympia' s writings as the flames of Schweinfurt had 
spared, and dedicated them to our Elizabeth of 
England, saying, in his own quaint manner, " From 
those which remain we may form a judgment of 
the rest, as hunters estimate the size and strength 
of the unseen lion from the footprints he leaves on 
the sand." 



THE RED SILK BANNER. 



Twenty-eight miles south of Seville, in the glowing 
province of Andalusia, stands the old Moorish town 
of Lebrija. It owns a great church which was once 
a mosque, and the ruined castle with its eight towers 
points to the stormy history of the past ; but older 
than Moorish reminiscence, traces of the old Roman 
name Nebrissa may still be read. The Guadalquivir 
flows by on its way from the heights of the Sierra 
Sagra ; and in this town of Lebrija was born, in the 
earlier half of the sixteenth century, one Rodrigo de 
Valero, the first man in Spain who publicly raised his 
voice in favour of the Reformation. The date of his 
birth is not clearly known ; and we have no accurate 
knowledge of the way in which his youth was passed, 
until we find him in Seville, about the year 1540. 
He was a well-born man, priding himself highly on 
his pure Spanish descent. There was in Spain so 
large an intermixture of the Moorish element, as 
well as of the Hebrew, in almost every grade of 
society, that when a pure pedigree could be dis- 
played, it was a matter of the loftiest family pride. 
A gentleman who could produce such an untainted 
escutcheon called himself " an old Christian/' But, 



MIXTURE OF RACES. 317 

in reality, there is a closer blending of races in the 
proud peninsula than in any other European coun- 
try; so that, besides the old Iberian, Celtic, Roman, 
Carthaginian, Greek, there are strong infusions of 
the Gothic, Hebrew, Saracenic, Syrian, Arabian, 
and Moorish elements. Down to the time of Fer- 
dinand and Isabella, there had been much associa- 
tion between Christians and Moors. The splendid 
hospitalities of Granada had often been accepted by 
royal guests of the Catholic creed. Christian knights 
had not scrupled to break a lance with the Moslem 
chivalry of Andalusia; and a Castilian poet or Arra- 
gonese " romaunt- writer " would deign to call the 
brilliant knights of Granada " Hidalgos " (" sons of 
somebody "), " though Moors." 

A sterner social, as well as political and religious, 
creed came in with Ferdinand the Catholic, which 
was but very slightly tempered by the suavities of 
his gentle Castilian queen ; and then many a proud 
grandee, who could fling his cloak over his shoulder 
with matchless grace, would gladly have covered 
with its ample folds some frightful blot in his 
heraldic coat, that marked a marriage with a rich 
Jewish heiress or dusky Moorish beauty long time 
ago. There is a dreaded work, the red-book of Cas- 
tilian nobility, before which many a proud forehead 
flushes with shame. It is called " El Tizon de 
Espana" ("The Brand of Spain"); and it tells 
many a family secret which some of the " old 
Christians " of the present day would fain forget. 
Even royal mandates have failed to suppress this 
mortifying witness. 

Rodrigo de Valero, however, could boast that he 
was an " old Christian, free from all stain of bad 
descent." Lebrija was too narrow a sphere for the 
display of his knightly horsemanship and his costly 



218 THE STORY OF SEVILLE. 

dress; and hence he was constantly appearing in 
Seville, the model of fashion for the young Spaniard 
of the sixteenth century. Seville was a stately old 
city for a Spanish hidalgo to disport himself in; 
with its long arcades under which he might lounge 
in the heat of the southern day, and its balconies 
with latticed windows for him to salute with the 
soft voice of his guitar in the cool evening. He 
would flutter his cloth-of-gold and his velvets amidst 
the sparkle of its many fountains, fed by the Moorish 
aqueduct which strides to the city on more than 
400 arches, now nearly 700 years old; or he would 
unconsciously track the course of that mysterious 
Roman water-way which was accidentally discovered 
following its subterranean path, and still bearing 
the changing city beneath the sweet stream that it 
had silently led along for a thousand years. The Phoe- 
nician had kissed his hand to Astarte in that long- 
lived city of Seville which he called Hispal; other 
unknown or little-known divinities had afterwards 
gathered their clusters of idolatrous worshippers 
before Julius Caesar came and called it Romula 
(" Little Rome ") ; and next the Goth came to make 
it his favoured capital; and then came the dark 
stranger from the other side of the narrow strait. 
The Moor, when he built his mosque to the honour 
of the " Prophet," on the very spot where stood the 
temple of Astarte and then that of Salambo, and 
where now stands the Romish cathedral, called the 
fair city Ishbilliah, in imitation of his Oriental pre- 
decessor; and when, in 1248, Ferdinand III. of 
Leon and Castile tore down the crescent from the 
lofty belfry of Abu Jusuf, and replaced it with the 
cross, the Castilian once more, and for the last time, 
modified the name of his favourite city, and lisped 
" Sevilla." It was Spain's metropolis until Kaiser 



R0DRIG0 DE VALERO DISAPPEARS. 219 

Charles V. removed his court to Valladolid. Truly 
it was a noble place for a young Spanish gallant to 
saunter in ; there was the " Patio-de-los-Naranjos," 
the " Court of Oranges," with the fountain at which 
the follower of Islam had performed his stated ablu- 
tions | and there was the famed Alcazar of Abder- 
rahmen, and the " Tower of Gold" on the margin 
of the Guadalquivir. These were the scenes in which 
Eodrigo de Valero was conspicuous for his splendour, 
and for the utter worldliness and depravity of his 
amusements. Suddenly he was missing from 
amongst them; and the crowd of admiring young 
associates found they had lost their leader. No 
Jewish money-lender (Jewish in heart, but Christian 
by enforced profession) had been tampering with his 
resources ; no Moorish Hakim (Moorish when the 
hour came to turn his swart brow towards Mecca, 
though he bent the knee when he encountered the 
host in the Plaza-de-Toros) had been laying finger 
on his pulse and pronouncing him fevered. Eodrigo 
had caught a glimpse of other riches than his own 
fine patrimony ; and he felt that a hand had been 
laid on him which had once been pierced for his 
sins. He was arrested in mid-career. For the 
present he wholly disappeared ; for he had shut 
himself up in his chamber with one only companion, 
the Vulgate translation of the Bible. A little Latin 
Eodrigo had treasured in his early youth ; and this 
slight knowledge was now of unspeakable worth to 
the solitary reader. By day he was studying hard 
behind the closed lattice to improve himself in the 
tongue of the Vulgate ; and far into the night his 
lamp was glimmering on the page which was now 
becoming to his eye luminous with truth. He 
gave up the costly equipage in which he used to 
dash along the banks of the Guadalquivir, and 



220 R0DRIG0 REAPPEARS, AND HAS MUCH TO SAY. 

past the " Tower of Gold." His dress was now 
despised and neglected, for a student's gown was 
enough for him as he bent over his one book; and 
at last, lifting his cleared brow from the page, he 
arose, one in heart, hope, faith, and love with the 
brave men who had believed, and therefore had 
spoken, in Germany, Italy, Switzerland, England, 
and France. Had Eodrigo walked forth from his 
retirement with tonsured head, sandalled feet, and a 
cord around his waist, his friends would only have 
said, " Ah ! the Caballero Eodrigo de Valero has 
had a sudden call to a religious life. We have lost 
his hospitable banquets; but, for himself, he will 
dine pleasantly enough in the refectory of yonder 
convent amongst the orange-trees." The step would 
have excited no surprise. The cloister was the con- 
stant resource of disappointed men who had given 
their whole heart to the world, and had discovered 
that the world had no heart to give in return ; who, 
having ventured everything and gained nothing, had 
bethought them that they could save their souls 
more easily in a cell than in the public square or the 
bull-ring. But the Senor Rodrigo had trodden no 
beaten path when he disappeared from society ; he 
had not been heard of at any of the monasteries, and 
he was never seen prostrate in rapt devotion before 
the altar of San- Juan-de-la- Palma, the old conse- 
crated mosque, or Santa-Maria-de-la-Blanca, once 
the synagogue of the unbelieving Jews. And so 
men marvelled, and touched their foreheads in pre- 
tended sympathy with a wandering mind. At length 
he came out from his seclusion, not macerated w T ith 
penances and flagellations, but joyous and confident. 
He looked like a man who had made some great dis- 
covery in secret and was burning to tell it in public. 
And he did tell it. He now no longer avoided 



HE TALKS WITH THE PRIESTS. 221 

general society ; lie sought company, and was much 
in conversation on a set of topics novel in the halls 
and arcades of Seville. But it was with priests and 
monks that he chiefly attempted to converse. He 
drew a glowing picture before their minds of the 
pure faith and the holy practice of the primitive 
Church. He showed the universal degeneracy from 
the early model, and charged the clergy with having 
spread the swift infection through every grade of 
the people. As they had led the way in the down- 
ward path of demoralisation, and of defection from 
primitive doctrine, he called upon them to turn and 
lead in the upward course of a general reformation. 
But Rodrigo would not even speak in a low voice 
on such unpleasant subjects. He talked loud and 
freely in sonorous Castilian, in the public walks and 
gardens, beside the fountains, in the squares and 
streets, wherever he could find a knot of listeners. 
It was observed that the young man was continually 
appealing to Holy Scripture as the standard of faith 
and doctrine, and as the depository of the Divine 
law. There were some who heard him gladly ; but 
the greater part of his secular hearers said, " Rodrigo 
de Valero is a romancer," or " Rodrigo de Valero is 
a fool ;" while the clergy, knitting their brows omi- 
nously, said, " And who art thou, that thou shouldst 
teach us? Unlearned, a layman, a man who has spent 
his life in dissipated amusements, how was he qualified 
to teach ? Nay, he must bring proofs of his mission 
before they would listen to the strange dogmas of an 
irregular enthusiast." Rodrigo had his answer ready : 
" Yes/' he said, " it was most true that he had been 
born and bred in ignorance, an ignorance for which 
perhaps some of themselves were responsible." He 
showed them that when he had panted like the hart 
after the water-brooks, he had not gone to drink at 



222 HE IS SUMMONED BEFORE THE INQUISITION. 

the polluted cistern that was hedged round with tra- 
dition and inventions of men, but he had betaken 
himself to the pure fountain of revealed truth, and, 
instead of consulting them as to the best way of 
drinking, as with cup, or scallop-shell, or forsooth 
from the bare hollow of the hand, he had been shown 
by a blessed Teacher, even by the Spirit who caused 
the waters to flow, that it was best to kneel down in 
humble prostration and bathe his own lips in the 
very stream itself. He reminded them that poor 
men and plain, simple fishermen and peasants, had 
once been able to prove a Sanhedrim blind and a 
priesthood ignorant. He showed that these unedu- 
cated men had received a commission to go out and 
teach a whole world, beginning at the very city 
where stood the Temple. He had Christ's example 
for pronouncing the message of " Woe unto you, 
scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites ! " and he told 
them that none but a spurious generation would re- 
quire of him a sign from heaven, for they loved dark- 
ness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. 
Such language as this was not likely to be long 
tolerated ; and Rodrigo de Valero was summoned 
before the " Holy Office." But he did not lower his 
crest and soften the tones of his voice even in face 
of that terrible tribunal. He actually launched into 
a keen disputation concerning the marks by which 
the one true Church might be recognised upon 
earth ; and he defined justification and the other 
leading doctrines of the Christian faith, truths with 
which he had become acquainted without any human 
instrumentality whatever, and solely by the teaching 
of the Spirit of God through the medium of the 
Word. There were some amongst his hearers who 
had secretly imbibed his opinions, but who had not 
found courage to confess them before men. They 



THE CHURCH RELIEVES HIM OF HIS WEALTH. 223 

were people of station and of authority, and they 
moved the court in his favour. There were other 
causes which operated on his behalf: for the in- 
exorable court remembered that the Senor de Eodrigo 
was a hidalgo with a fair escutcheon ; that he was an 
" old Christian free from all stain of bad descent :" 
he was insane — yes, doubtless insane ; and moreover 
he had wealth. Might not the precious interests of 
Holy Church be best served if they confiscated all that 
property which might otherwise flow into unhallowed 
channels, and let a vapouring madman go free? And 
so the Church relieved Eodrigo de Valero of all 
future responsibility concerning his earthly posses- 
sions, and sent him forth unharmed, but without a 
single maravedi left of all his fine fortune. One-third 
of all the confiscated property went to the Inquisitors 
themselves, another to the government, and another 
was allotted to meet the current expenses ; an ami- 
cable adjustment whose influence it is easy to com- 
prehend. The " current expenses " must have been 
enormous ; as, besides the regular staff of officials, 
" Apostolic Inquisitors," secretaries, &c, there were 
no fewer than 20,000 familiars gliding stealthily and 
cat-like about the land, ready to stroke into security 
with the velvet paw of gracious flattery, or to un- 
sheathe the claws and clutch the unconscious victim 
in some unguarded moment. No one could be sure 
that the servant who obsequiously brought him his 
cloak, or held the stirrup of his beautiful barb from 
the other side of the narrow sea, was not in the pay 
of the Inquisition. Hence the sense of insecurity 
was frightful; and men moved suspiciously about 
amongst the trap-doors of treachery, and the un- 
known pitfalls of domestic or civil life. 

But Eodrigo was incorrigible. He was almost as 
troublesome when poor as he had been when rich, 



224 THE " SANBENITO." 

though for a short time he lowered his voice in 
public, and, submitting to the entreaties of his 
friends, abstained from any strong demonstration 
amidst his old haunts. But all this while he was 
engaged in expounding to his associates in private 
the Epistle to the Romans. Even such means of 
evangelising his neighbours failed to satisfy his 
burning zeal for the truth ; and firmly believing 
that he had received a commission to proclaim the 
simple religion of Jesus amidst the strongholds of 
superstition, he again spake with his tongue in no 
dubious language. Again he was summoned before 
the Inquisition. But there was something so extra- 
ordinary about the man and his mission, that for the 
second time these dark doctors of the law pronounced 
the disease under which the patient laboured to be 
insanity. It is understood that this lenient view of 
his case was industriously cultivated by his secret 
adherents ; and hence, instead of burning him in the 
public square, he was condemned to life-long im- 
prisonment, and to wear a " sanbenito " for the rest 
of his days. De Castro, following Cypriano de 
Valera, says " they made him recant : " but Dr. 
M'Crie does not mention any recantation ; and such 
would not be in keeping with the extraordinary in- 
trepidity of Rodrigo's character, or with his un- 
shrinking faith, which at no other time appears to 
have failed him. This was about the year 1555 ; the 
year in which Charles V. divested his brow of so 
many crowns, and divided the glittering heap 
between his son Philip and his brother Ferdinand. 
The " sanbenito," or sambenito, mentioned above, 
was the hideous dress worn by " penitents," a coarse 
yellow woollen frock, tied in round the neck, and 
commonly reaching down to the knees. It was 
associated in the minds of the people with the long 



IMPRISONMENT FOR LIFE. 225 

procession that was wont to wind into the public 
square of so many of the Spanish cities on the 
great festival of an " auto-da-fe/ 5 associated with 
the yellow wax tapers, with the conical pasteboard 
cap richly garnished with figures of flames and 
demons, and with the glad ringing of the church- 
bells. The sambenito which Rodrigo de Valero was 
condemned to wear was of an unusual size; and 
when he was led into the Church of San Salvador in 
Seville, amidst the sorrowful troop of penitents, to 
hear mass and sermon, the figure in the enormous 
sambenito was repeatedly seen to rise ; and before 
he could be stopped, Rodrigo de Valero raised that 
well-known voice, and loudly protested against the 
fatal errors which had been set forth in the sermon 
of monk or priest. His secret supporters again 
laughed and touched their foreheads ; and owing to 
the extraordinary amount of influence which was 
excited on his behalf, no " auto " was ever fed with 
the great sambenito of Eodrigo de Valero. This was 
certainly a remarkable case of forbearance ; but it is 
matter of history that the Inquisitors of that parti- 
cular period were less savage in their individual 
character than those who preceded or followed them. 
However, the irrepressible penitent must be kept 
down by some more stringent means than had yet 
been devised; and at last the " Holy Office" took 
him out of his prison in Seville, and shut him up in 
solitary confinement for the dregs of his poor life in 
the monastery of Nuestra Sefiora de Barrameda, in 
the town of San Lucar. It was a dreary place for a 
man like Rodrigo de Valero to eke out his existence 
in ; and the life of stagnant seclusion was almost 
intolerable to one whose feelings were impulsive, con- 
victions vehement, temperament restless and energetic. 
This Andalusian town of San Lucar is planted 
p 



226 RODRIGO DIES AT SAN LUCAR. 

just where the Guadalquivir pours its stream into 
the sea. The land-view is singularly bare, for 
scarcely a tree strains the tropical beams through 
its green jalousies. But its story has been a me- 
morable one. The Moors held it in the old times ; 
and for some 500 years the crescent had been gleam- 
ing in the sun-light over the undulating plains — 
hot and sandy almost as Arabia. But the town was 
taken from the Moslem about the middle of the 
thirteenth century, and Sancho the Brave gave it to 
Guzman the Good. But a braver and a better than 
either of these worthies, Christopher Columbus, had 
sailed out of the port of San Lucar de Barrameda on 
his third voyage in search of a greater " Handalusia," 
a broader " land of the evening ;" and about twenty 
years later still, Ferdinand Magellan had led out his 
bold fleet from the port on that first of all voyages 
round the world, from which he himself never re- 
turned. Here pined and died the Cavalier Rodrigo 
de Valero. He had sought and found a better world 
than Columbus had dreamed of in the most daring 
vision of the dawn. He had gone forth by faith 
from home and friends, " not knowing whither he 
went," but " seeking a better country, that is, an 
heavenly ; " and now, over-wearied with his journey, 
but sure of the promised inheritance, he lay down 
and died in his lonely prison on the sea-shore. The 
great "sanbenito" which he had worn up to the 
time of his death, which took place when he was 
rather more than fifty years of age, was hung up as a 
trophy in the gorgeous cathedral-church of Seville, 
where the inscription which was placed beneath it 
was read and wondered over by crowds, for it bore 
these words : "Rodrigo de Valero, a citizen of Lebrix 
and Seville, a false apostle and a Lutheran, who pre- 
tended to be sent of God." 



THE "HOLY OFFICE ' IN FULL WORK. 227 

Such an example as that of Rodrigo, and such 
teaching as his, were not likely to remain long 
without fruit. Juan Gil, generally known as Dr. 
iEgidius, was his most distinguished follower. But 
it was soon discovered that the numbers that had 
embraced the reformed tenets were very considerable ; 
and the vast machinery of the Inquisition was soon 
in full working on their behoof. It is noticeable that 
amongst the victims of this terrific court in Spain, 
there was an unusually large proportion of the edu- 
cated, intellectual, and influential class. A contem- 
porary writer, Cypriano de Valera, says, that " in 
Spain, many very learned, many very noble, and 
many of the most distinguished of the gentry have 
for this cause (the adoption of the reformed doctrines) 
been led forth to the scaffold. There is not a city, 
and, if one may so speak, there is not a village, not a 
hamlet, nor a noble house, that has not had and still 
has one or more that God of his infinite mercy has 
enlightened with the light of the Gospel." It is a 
common proverb in Spain in the present day, when 
speaking of a learned man, to say, " He is so learned 
that he is in danger of becoming a Lutheran." 

From a very early time there had existed a close 
connection between Spain and Provence. The Vau- 
dois doctrines, which had almost wholly overflowed 
the south of France, had penetrated into the Penin- 
sula through the passes of the Pyrenees as early as 
the twelfth century. The Waldenses, besides their 
simple and scriptural views of truth, had brought 
with them the Provencal taste for intellectual culti- 
vation and the fondness for the graceful arts of poetry 
and music. The Prove^al tongue was affluent and 
flexible. The troubadour, at once poet and musi- 
cian, moved about like a lord of the land, honoured 
wherever he went. He was a welcome guest in court 



228 FEUDAL SOCIETY IN WINTER. 

or camp ; but it was chiefly in the castle that his 
appearance, especially in the early spring season, was 
celebrated as a festival. Feudal society may be said 
to have hibernated during the long dark months, 
when the lord and his retainer, the knight, the 
squire, the serf, and the horse, all retired into winter- 
quarters. The castle-hall and the castle-yard were 
crowded with listless loungers. The winding of a 
bugle-horn was a boon ; the baying of the restless 
hound was eagerly listened to as betokening the 
approach of some rare guest ; and the rattle of the 
drawbridge chain was music, even if it only de- 
scended to allow some belated pilgrim to come in 
and tell the gossip of the wintry world. The long 
evenings were spent in the mimic war of the chess- 
board; and happy was the knight who found an 
enemy worthy to be challenged for a sham-fight on 
its squares. With the opening of the first flower, 
with the coming of the first swallow, with the bur- 
nishing of the armour, with the first flutter of the 
lady's robe out on the steep walks of the garden, and 
the first jingle of the chatelaine's keys as she visited 
her still or her larder in provident anticipation of ban- 
quets and galas, came the troubadour or the trouvere. 
He too had been polishing his pointed spear of wit, 
gathering his fanciful flowers of song, spreading the 
wing of his wandering imagination, and ruffling the 
graceful folds of his poetic mantle. He was pre- 
sently installed on the seat of honour in the paved 
baronial hall; and while the ladies sat breathless 
around him, and the seigneur and squires leaned 
with folded arms against the wall, beneath the dinted 
shields of their forefathers or the branching antlers 
of the stag, the trouvere drew forth the thrilling 
measures of his legendary muse. Sometimes he 
simply recited the stanzas which were the laborious 




The Troubadour in the Olden Time. 



See page 228. 



" LISTEN, MY LORDS ! " 229 

fruit of his winter retirement ; and sometimes he 
touched his lute or viol, while he rang out perhaps 
as many as fifty or sixty lines to the same rhyme ! 
This repetition was melody instead of weariness to 
the ears of the warriors. When the same sound 
recurred over and over again, they began to recog- 
nise it as musical, and its constant return was hailed 
with renewed pleasure : it was like the measured 
tramp, tramp, of the warder, or the monotone of the 
wind in the corridor or of the stream in the valley ; 
so it settled itself on the memory, and became the 
tradition of the future. The trouvere's lay was often 
taken from the chronicle of the noble house in whose 
walls he sang ; and it was no uncommon thing for 
the baron to lend the precious roll, which was the 
only history of his line, to the trouvere beforehand, 
in order that he might supply himself with tradi- 
tional allusion and ancestral sketch. " Listen, my 
lords/' was the feudal formula with which he com- 
menced and recommenced his song. There was an 
appellative attached to almost every name of country 
or of hero: the country was " the fair," "the 
sweet," "the lauded," "the honoured," "the 
adored ; " the hero was " he of the lofty thought/' 
"of the lion heart," " of the hard hand," "of the 
proud look ; " and the minstrel sought not to vary 
his description, because his auditors were best plea- 
sured by hearing things that they well understood, 
and phrases which they had heard a hundred times 
before. 

There were academies where the students were 
taught the rudiments of the " Gui Saber," as it was 
called — the " Gay Science," or fine art of song ; and 
many of the professors of poetry received the honour 
of knighthood, and were rewarded by their noble 
admirers with gifts of fine horses and splendid robes. 



230 ASSOCIATION BETWEEN PROVENCE AND SPAIN. 

With this taste for intellectual cultivation and refined 
amusement, which prevailed wherever the Provencal 
tongue was spoken, were united a keen love of liberty, 
a general freedom and intelligence of mind, and an 
energy in pursuing commerce and the industrial arts, 
which made the cities of fair Provence nearly equal 
in prosperity to the brilliant Italian republics of the 
middle ages. Even the Albigensian u Barbs " (the 
name by which their pastors were known) used to 
spend their leisure moments in cultivating poetry as 
well as the simple arts of life ; and so high was their 
personal character as to make a comparison with that 
of the Eomish priests around them extremely discre- 
ditable to the latter. " I would rather be a priest 
than have done such a thing ! " was a general pro- 
verb in the south of France. 

The association between this cultured and refined 
people and the people of Spain was rendered more 
intimate by the circumstance that the King of Spain 
was Count of Provence and Lord of Narbonne and 
of other districts in the south of France ; and though 
cruel persecution soon followed the Albigenses over 
the mountains, and drove them from the beautiful 
provinces of Spain, and though Provence and Langue- 
doc themselves were changed into a smoking and 
desolate wilderness by the papal crusades, yet the 
reforming element had secretly survived the test, and 
was every now and then springing up iu a sporadic 
manner in different parts of the Peninsula. 

But it was not by the light song of the trouba- 
dours, or by the culture of the civilising arts of com- 
merce in the sixteenth century, that the doctrines of 
the Reformation spread over Spain and raised up 
such a " noble army of martyrs ; " it was by the 
secret circulation of the Bible, aided by a vast num- 
ber of Lutheran tracts and treatises. Charles V. on 



"JULIAN THE LITTLE" AND HIS WINE-CASKS. 231 

the throne of Spain, of the Netherlands, and of all 
Germany, the intercourse between the Peninsula and 
those regions over which the yellow flag of infection 
was already flying became frequent and intimate. 
At first several of the books of Scripture were intro- 
duced into Spain disguised in Castilian verse ; the 
sagacious detectives of the Inquisition, having small 
acquaintance with the strangers in their true cha- 
racter, failed to recognise them under their slight 
incognito. But in the year 1557, a brave little hero, 
Julian Hernandez, who went by the name of " Julian 
the Little," or " the Muleteer," managed to smuggle 
into Spain two great barrels of Bibles in the lan- 
guage of the land. He was one of the most enter- 
prising of contrabandistas ; and contraband trade is 
at all times deliciously stimulating to the heart of a 
Spaniard. " Little Julian " packed his casks at 
Geneva, filling them with Bibles and Protestant 
books. These casks he placed within larger ones, and 
the spare space between was filled with French wine. 
There were officers planted on the quays of the sea- 
ports, from whose vigilance it would be difficult to 
escape ; so the muleteer determined to carry his pre- 
cious goods the whole distance from Geneva to 
Seville by land. But he found these custom-house 
officers of religion also watching for dealers in illicit 
goods in the mountain-passes which he had to tra- 
verse with his mules ; and all his address was needed 
to blind their eyes. At length the barrels entered 
the gate of the Andalusian city in safety, and many 
a thirsty heart drank the "new wine of the King- 
dom," and was glad. 

In Italy, as well as in Spain, the works of the 
German Reformers were published under the veil of 
translated names. In this thin disguise they even 
made their way up the staircases and along the cor- 



232 THE REFORMERS IN DISGUISE. 

ridors of the Vatican; and red hats and mitres 
nodded approval of sentiments at which, had their 
source been suspected, they would have shaken with 
horror. The " Common-places " of Philip Melanc- 
thon were printed at Venice as coming from the pen 
of "Messer Ippofilo da Terra Negra," " Black Earth" 
being the rendering of the Greek Melancthon and of 
the German Schwartzerd, which was the scholarly 
Reformer's real name. They were bought and read 
at Rome for a whole year before the Black Earth of 
the north was discovered to be the very soil in which 
had flourished such rare roots of " heretical pravity." 
In the like manner, Martin Bucer's Commentary on 
the Psalms was sold in France and Italy under the 
authorship of Aretius Felinus, simply his own name 
in Greek and his surname in Latin. Luther's trea- 
tise on " Justification " and his Preface to the Epistle 
to the Romans were eagerly devoured under the 
supposition that they were authorised food provided 
by the safe hand of Cardinal Fregoso. The tusk of 
Torquemada should have been present on the table 
of the student when he indulged in such dangerous 
fare — that tusk of some wild animal, probably a boar, 
which the terrible Inquisitor- General of Spain always 
placed on the board before him when he sat down 
to meat, in the confidence that it would detect, 
reveal, and neutralise all poisons that might be 
present ; a heathenish spell, and a cowardly resource 
for a man who dare not move about in his own coun- 
try without a mounted guard of fifty familiars and 
a marching guard of 200. The cruel are generally 
cowards. 

The earliest person in Spain who decidedly em- 
braced the reformed opinions was Juan de Valdes. 
He belonged to an illustrious house, his father being 
Don Fernando de Valdes, military commander of the 



TAULER AND THE MYSTICS. 233 

old Castilian city of Cuenca on the river Jucar. He 
was older in time than Eodrigo de Valero ; and, 
unlike him, he had been highly educated. It is 
inferred that he received his fine education at the 
university-city of Alcala, the city which not very long 
afterwards gave birth to Spain's famous Cervantes, 
Juan was courtier as well as man of letters ; and 
Charles V., discovering his powers, sent him to 
Naples as secretary to the Viceroy. But before leav- 
ing his own land, to which he appears never to have 
returned, he wrote some remarkable pamphlets which 
paved the way for the coming inquiry after truth. 
One of these was a work on the interpretation of 
Holy Scripture, and to have had this tract in desk 
or chest was afterwards made a ground of condemna- 
tion against men trembling before the dark tribunal 
of the Inquisition. Valdes had grasped the doctrines 
of justification by faith in Christ, and of sanctifica- 
tion by the work of the Holy Spirit ; but he had sur- 
rounded them with a somewhat cloudy atmosphere 
drawn from the early mysticism of the celebrated 
German John Tauler. Tauler wrote and preached 
in the fourteenth century ; and his word and works 
were highly fascinating to men who were anxiously 
groping after the least glimmer of divine light. 
Their rich glow of spiritual devotion ran rapidly 
through the veins of men who were panting after 
light and life, and who, awakening from amidst the 
heavy sleepers around them, went off willingly into 
the delicious dream-land of mystic piety. They loved 
the truth of God in their hearts ; but they saw not 
its outlines in the clearness of that mental vision 
which was reserved for the great teachers of the six- 
teenth century. Their life was love, and they lived 
in the ecstasies of rapt meditation on the holiest of 
themes, the unfathomable love of God and the won- 



234 INFLUENTIAL WORKS OF VALDES. 

drous sufferings of Emmanuel. They had escaped 
from the outer court of ceremonial observance, of 
burdensome tradition, of priestly assumption, of 
tyrannical legalism; but the inner chamber into 
which they had laboriously penetrated was too far 
removed from the daylight, and so, in the dimness of 
the hour, they sat down and dreamed dreams — 
dreams true in their elements, faulty in their com- 
binations. Of this class was Juan de Valdes : his 
writings helped on the good cause ; but he left his 
native country at an early period ; and Dr. M'Crie is 
of opinion that, had he remained, "his personal 
presence would have produced little effect. It 
required a person of less caution, and more adven- 
turous spirit, to burst the terrible barrier which op- 
posed the entrance of the Gospel into Spain, and to 
raise the standard of truth within sight of the flames 
of the Inquisition." And that man was found in 
Rodrigo de Valero, whose story has been already told. 
Juan de Valdes was favoured by Charles V. as an 
excellent jurisconsult; and as he moved about in 
Germany and Italy, he made literary friendships and 
theological intimacies with most of the great minds 
of the day. It is certain that he made many converts 
to Lutheran opinions ; and two dialogues written by 
him were singularly influential. In one he overhears 
an important conversation between Mercury, whose 
winged feet have just alighted on the border of the 
Stygian Lake, and the ferryman Charon, wherein 
they talk over the troublous affairs of Europe with 
great zest. The other is a colloquy between an arch- 
deacon and a layman about the startling irruption 
of Germans and Spaniards in 1527, at the taking of 
Rome by Charles V., — that terrible sack of Rome 
under the Constable Bourbon, the revolted servant 
of Francis I., when Pope Clement VII. was besieged 



THE FATE OF HIS BOOKS. 235 

for a miserable month in his castle of St. Angelo, 
where he was taken by the Imperialists with all his 
heaped-up treasures. The story of sack and siege, 
and of the ultimate escape to Orvieto of the poor 
" Head of the Church" in merchant's disguise, was 
a text worthy of the homily of Juan de Valdes. De 
Castro declares that these two dialogues, "in which 
Valdes attempted with remarkable artifice to imbue 
the minds of his readers with the doctrines of Luther, 
without doubt laid the foundations of Protestantism 
in Spain." Caraccioli, a Romish historian of the 
times, says of Valdes, " He caused a far greater 
slaughter of souls than did all the thousands of here- 
tical saldiery." The works of Valdes, and especially 
the conversation between Mercury and Charon, have 
the honour of appearing in all the expurgatorial 
indexes of the Inquisition, and the reading thereof is 
denounced under severe penalties. After the great 
" Index Expurgatorius " of Pope Paul IV. was pro- 
mulgated, in 1559, the works of Juan Valdes almost 
disappeared, being burnt to ashes en masse. But 
there was a curious reappearance of them in 1728, 
when the pulling down of an old house in the city of 
Urbino revealed many of the embalmed remains of 
genius and piety, after an entombment of more than 
a century and a half. 

Some of the books that escaped the flames have 
been found in a very mangled condition. For 
instance, the works of the fathers which had re- 
ceived the annotations of Erasmus, were torn with 
pincers, cut with knives, and defaced with gluti- 
nous substances; while one book is patched over 
like a child's scrap-book with pictures of tourneys, 
animals, medals, executions, and battles, cut out of 
Munster's " Cosmography" by the relenting censors 
when that book was ordered off to the funeral pile. 



236 CHARACTER, OF VALDES. 

In 1540, Juan de Valdes died at Naples, to the 
deep grief of many learned and pious friends, who 
clustered round him as their beloved head. The 
beauty of his character and the deep piety of his life 
won for him both love and admiration ; while his 
singularly attenuated figure and feeble health gave 
him a highly spiritualised appearance. Ranke says 
of him, " Valdes was gentle, agreeable, and not with- 
out considerable reach of mind. He possessed an ex- 
traordinary influence over the nobility and the learned 
men of Naples." He resided, in the latter part of 
his life, either at Posilippo, the Puteoli of St. Paul, 
— that fair little town near Naples, which runs out 
on its causeway to meet the cool blue swells before 
they are heated by the touch of the glowing shore, — 
or else on the Chiaja at Naples, in face of the match- 
less bay. One of his devoted friends, Bonfadio, in 
speaking of his wonderfully etherealised figure, says, 
" A portion of his soul sufficed to animate his frail, 
attenuated body ; the larger part of his clear untrou- 
bled intellect was ever raised aloft in the contempla- 
tion of truth." Dr. M'Crie, in summing up the 
testimonies recorded of him, remarks that "his 
character was admirably adapted to produce an im- 
pression favourable to the new opinions. Possessed 
of considerable learning and of superior address, 
fervent in his piety and gentle in his dispositions, 
polite in manners and eloquent in conversation, he 
soon became a favourite with the principal nobility, 
and with all the enlightened men who, at a certain 
season of the year, resorted in great numbers to the 
Neapolitan metropolis." Amongst the most im- 
portant of his labours was the translation of the 
Psalms of David from the Hebrew into Castilian 
Spanish, which, together with his Commentaries on 
the Epistles of St. Paul in the same language, was 



STATISTICS OF THE SPANISH INQUISITION. 237 

printed by stealth in Venice. He was one of the 
many pioneers of the Gospel, one of the path- 
finders who went laboriously in front of " the noble 
army of martyrs/' confessors, and reformers. If, as 
is often remarked, good road- making must precede 
civilisation, and herald the way for settled society, 
surely the path-finders who are the first to plunge 
into the tangled forest, and make a way for the 
coming mission of truth, are worthy of all honour- 
able remembrance and of all loving sympathy. 

But where are the monuments of victorious truth 
in Spain ? Where the settled communities of Pro- 
testant believers ? Where the glorious harvest after 
all the painful ploughing, the secret sowing, the 
watering, not indeed from the fountains of the sky 
or from the hidden well-springs of the dews, but 
with tears, day and night, that soaked the land? 
Nay, it is vain to ask; for the hot prairie-fire of 
persecution swept in its madness over the whole 
Peninsula, licking up every green blade with its 
flame-tongues, and leaving a smoking wilderness in 
its track. The only garners for the promised harvest 
were the deep dark dungeons of the Inquisition. And 
the system of wholesale extermination answered in 
Spain, it answered in Italy; not in Holland, not in 
Germany, not in our own blessed land of England, 
God be praised ! In the first year of its operation 
against the spread of the new opinions, " the Holy 
Office of Seville," whose jurisdiction &t that time 
extended over Castile, committed 2000 persons alive 
to the flames, burnt as many in effigy, and condemned 
17,000 to different penances. According to a mode- 
rate computation, from the same date to 1517, 13,000 
persons were burnt alive, 8,700 were burnt in effigy, 
and 169,723 were condemned to penances; making, in 
all, 191,423 persons condemned by the several tribu- 



238 HOUSE OF REFUGE FOR THE HOMELESS POOR. 

nals of Spain in the course of only thirty-six years ;* 
and all this in the earliest years of the attempted 
Reformation in Spain, before the movement had taken 
any positive shape. With the frightful scenes of after- 
years we are much more familiar, when a great auto- 
da-fe was esteemed by the courtiers of Philip a better 
sport any day than a bull-fight. Multitudes of Spa- 
niards migrated to foreign shores. England opened 
her broad doors to the scared and hunted fugitives, 
asking no questions and demanding no passport. Emi- 
grant churches sprang up in London and other cities, 
where Spaniards met their brethren from Italy and 
from France, and, bowing low in the unity of the one 
faith, joined together in the prayer of the exile for 
home and country. The harbouring of such poor out- 
casts, and especially the runaway Spaniards, was made 
one of the great charges against our Tudor Coeur-de- 
Lion, Elizabeth, in Pope Pius V.'s bull of excommu- 
nication ! This roused Bishop Jewel to put forth an 
eloquent defence, in which he says : " It pleased God 
here to cast them on land. The Queen, of her gra- 
cious pity, granted them harbour. Is it become a 
heinous thing to show mercy ? God willed the chil- 
dren of Israel to love the stranger, because they had 
been strangers in the land of Egypt. He that 
showeth mercy shall find mercy. And why may not 
Queen Elizabeth receive a few afflicted members of 
Christ which are compelled to carry his cross ? . . . 
They are our brethren ; they live not idly. If they 
take houses of us, they pay rent for them ; they hold 
not our grounds but by making true recompense. 
They beg not in. our streets, nor crave anything at 
our hands, but to breathe our air and see our sun. 
They labour truly ; they live sparefully ; they are 
good examples of virtue, travail, faith, and patience. 

* Mariana, M'Crie, Llorente, De Castro, &c. 



SPAIN ADMITTED TO " PRATIQUE.*" 239 

The towns in which they abide are happy, for God 
doth follow them with his blessing/' 

Spies and familiars, with money-bags in their pos- 
session, moved about stealthily on the Continent, 
watching for the moment when they might safely 
fling the dark cloak of Spain around some poor wan- 
derer, and hurry him back to the dungeons of the 
Inquisition ; but these lurking figures dared not set 
foot on the free turf of England, or if they came, 
they could not succeed in carrying off their victim ; 
and wide may the doors of this House of Refuge ever 
stand to the homeless poor of Christ's Gospel ! Open 
may they stand even to those unhappy men who, 
traitors against the world's liberties, have been run 
down in the struggle, and come hither to hide ! The 
porters at the oaken door of the asylum shall " ask 
no question for conscience' sake," when they let in 
the fugitives and give them lodging. 

Once more to return to the Peninsula. The year 
1570 has been spoken of as the time when the at- 
tempted Reformation in Spain finally died out. A 
hideous quarantine had been performed, and Spain 
was again admitted to "pratique" amongst the 
company of " Catholic countries" that were free of 
infection from the plague of Protestantism. The flag 
which now waved unchallenged over the land was the 
great red silk standard of the Holy Office. It was 
embroidered on one side with the honoured name of 
Pope Sixtus IV., with his portrait and with his arms ; 
on the other, with the hard visage, name, and arms 
of Ferdinand the Catholic — the two great benefactors 
who had endowed Spain with the gift of the Inqui- 
sition in its modern shape. Above all was shining a 
golden crucifix ; and under this Banner of Red the 
land had rest from heresy. 



THE FAIR PIETIST. 



In the old French town of Montargis, near the 
great forest of the same name, in the province of 
Orleanois, was born, on the 13th April, 1648, the 
celebrated Jeanne Marie Bouvieres de la Mothe, 
one of the most influential women of her century. 
It is by her married name that she is so widely 
known ; and Madame Guyon still exerts a kind of 
mysterious influence over thousands of minds. 
Beautiful, eloquent, and full of a lofty yet tender 
enthusiasm, she will ever be the ideal of her own 
peculiar class of character. In an age of hard mili- 
tary despotism, amidst a depraved society, with a 
court of intense worldliness thinly varnished by 
religious bigotry (for it was the age of Louis XIV., 
of Madame de Maintenon, and of the terrible Dra- 
gonnades), Madame Guyon fearlessly uplifted a 
standard of pure spiritualism, and steadfastly walked 
before the world in the beauty oi holiness. She 
was singularly gifted with those moral qualities and 
those spiritual graces which make a Christian 
heroine ; and as these were invested with a fine per- 
son, captivating manners, and a telicitous command 
of the language both of the lip and of the pen, the 
effect was complete fascination. But, with all her 
highly emotional piety, there was a want of clear 
spiritual vision ; and with all her martyr-like courage, 
there was a lack of intellectual expansion. She had 



THE LITTLE BENEDICTINE. 241 

more love than light. She was a brave woman, a fer- 
vent high-souled Christian, but a misty theologian. 
A Eomanist she was born, and within the pale of 
Romanism she died ; but her whole life was a protest 
against many of its errors. With a strong revulsion 
of feeling she turned away from the outward ceremo- 
nial of her Church and from its oppressive demands, 
and, with the fervour of a devotee, took refuge in a 
religion of profound inward emotions and visionary 
abstractions. It was the natural recoil of a pure and 
loving soul ; and if some illuminated mists gathered 
about her head and so obscured her vision, her heart 
nevertheless held intimate converse with heaven, and 
the world was the better for her example. 

Madame Guyon's father, Claude Bouvieres, Sei- 
gneur de la Mothe Vergonville, was an honourable 
and pious Roman Catholic ; her mother a lady of 
high character; both of them influential people 
amongst the aristocracy of Montargis. The little 
Jeanne Marie was sent to the school of the Ursuline 
nuns when she was but two years and a half old, an 
early beginning of education for the future pietist. 
When the child was four years of age, she went to 
live in a convent of the Benedictines, with the 
Duchess of Montbason, a friend of her father ; and 
there she was dressed in the full habit of the order, 
— a grave nun in miniature, — a pretty Benedictine 
show-doll, with all the quaint devout ways of a little 
religieuse. The fair infant already had her dreams, 
night dreams and clay ; and fully believing that she 
had a call to a religious life, she made her tender 
little vows of love to her unseen Lord, and told her 
schoolfellows that she was willing to be a martyr 
for his name. Everything around her was forced 
and unnatural ; and we cannot wonder that an en- 
thusiastic child, conscious of the love of her heavenly 
Father to his little ones, should feel an impulse to 

Q 



242 REHEARSAL OF A MARTYRDOM. 

lay some costly offering upon the altar of sacrifice. 
Perhaps it was a gentle premonition of her future of 
persecution ; but we cannot safely liken it to that 
early morning voice which awoke the Hebrew child 
in the Temple, when he sprang from his little couch, 
and running innocently to the high-priest, said, 
"Here am I, for thou didst call me." The coarse- 
minded girls who were Jeanne Marie's schoolfellows 
at the Benedictine convent were altogether incapable 
of appreciating the fervent dedication of the young 
enthusiast, and they determined to put it to a savage 
test. "Yes," they said to the child, "God had 
certainly accepted her offer of martyrdom, and it was 
now to take place— now, immediately." The little 
victim did not flinch ; she only asked for an interval 
of private devotion ; and then the unrelenting girls 
led her into a room where were arrayed all the solemn 
circumstantials of an execution. It was but a 
"private theatrical" to them, but it was a cruel 
mockery. There was a cloth spread, on which the 
child kneeled with all honesty of purpose, and laid 
her meek head on the block. The executioner lifted 
a heavy cutlass, when suddenly up welled the love 
of dear life, and the martyr sprang from the block, 
crying out that " she had not freedom to die without 
her father's leave ! " Of course the school-girls 
scoffed at the faint and false heart which had no 
courage to face the doom it had invoked, and the 
future heroine, who was not ashamed in after-life 
to confess her Lord before kings, was driven from 
their company as an impostor. But the effect of 
this scene on the sensitive mind of the child was 
painful and injurious. She fancied she had been 
unfaithful to her high calling ; that her love was not 
strong as death ; and she lost her infantine peace, 
for she thought she had forfeited the favour of her 
God: and all this needless suffering because the 



A FUGITIVE QUEEN. 243 

dew of the morning had been so rudely brushed 
away from her tender spirit. Even her health broke 
down under the unnatural pressure of discourage- 
ment, and she was taken back to her home. But a 
French mother of the 17th century considered that 
no such fitting nursery as a convent could be found 
for the training of even a morbidly sensitive child ; 
and at the age of seven Jeanne Marie was again 
delegated to the sombre nurture of the Ursuline 
nuns. One day an incident occurred which is worth 
mentioning, as it was an episode in her history which 
might have changed the whole course of her life. 
When she was eight years old, she was sent to see 
a fugitive queen who was visiting Montargis, and 
whom M. de la Mothe, as the leading man of the 
city, was entertaining at his own house. This was 
the beautiful and bigoted Henrietta Maria, wife of 
our unhappy Charles I., and daughter of the great 
Henry of France. " If yon want a little amuse- 
ment," said the proud father to the queen's con- 
fessor, "you can entertain yourself well with that 
child." The confessor was charmed with the intel- 
ligent answers which the fair little Ursuline scholar 
gave to his difficult questionings ; and in his turn 
he reported her to his royal mistress : " Tour ma- 
jesty must have some diversion with that child." 
"The queen also tried me," says Madame Guyon 
naively enough, " and she was so well satisfied with 
my lively answers and my manners, that she not 
only requested my father to place me with her, but 
intimated that she would make me maid-of-honour 
to the princess her daughter. Her desire to have 
me was so great, that the refusal of my father evi- 
dently disobliged her. Doubtless it was God who 
caused this refusal, and who turned off the stroke 
which might have intercepted my salvation." 

Before she was eleven years old the child was sent 



244 "LUX IN TENEBRLS." 

to a third convent ; and this time she was under the 
rule of the Dominicans. It is surprising that a cha- 
racter of so much force should have been developed 
under such a broken, motley, and narrowing system 
of instruction. But while she was under the Domi- 
nicans there was an incident of far more moment 
than an interview with the crownless daughter of 
Henri Quatre. On going one day into her own 
convent-chamber, she found a book which had been 
left there, though by what accident or with what 
design has not been explained. She opened and 
found it to be that unknown book, the Bible. This 
was a wondrous boon. " I spent whole days in 
reading it," she says, " giving no heed to other 
books or other subjects from morning to night; and 
having great power of recollection, I committed the 
historical parts to memory almost entirely." This 
was the lamp in the cell for which she had been 
pining in her darkness, — a true lux in tenebris, 
according to the motto of that Waldensian Church 
with which her persecuted life had afterwards so 
much in common. This early study of the Holy 
Scriptures had a powerful effect in moulding her reli- 
gious character ; but before she wholly chose her part 
as a disciple of Christ, the world made a strong effort 
to get possession of the heart of the young devotee. 
Years had passed on : and Mademoiselle de la 
Mothe was becoming a very noticeable person on 
account of her refined beauty and stately grace. 
Her intellectual animation and bright intelligence 
added expression to her faultless loveliness ; and 
many admirers were striving to attract the regards 
of the tall convent school-girl. Contending emo- 
tions were now dividing her heart ; for instance, an 
impulse towards a devout life was given by the mere 
passing through Montargis of a young cousin, M. de 
Toissij who was bound on a mission to Cochin China. 



THE DEVOTEE AND HER DISTRACTIONS. 245 

Jeanne Marie did not even see the traveller, who 
was one of those really devoted and pious mission- 
aries to whom the Romish Church can point as 
having done her bidding in the East. But when the 
young girl heard of the cousin's sanctity, his vowed 
work and his holy words, she felt that he had left a 
track of light behind him which she would fain have 
followed ; and she wept day and night for more holi- 
ness in her own soul. Again, we find her endeavour- 
ing to subject the poor body to the soul by punishing 
it with austerities ; and in order to keep her Lord 
ever before her mind, she writes the Saviour's name 
in large characters, and wears it wherever she goes.. 
Then she announces her determination to take the 
veil, and be at once and for ever the mystical bride 
of heaven. But her father, the Seigneur de la 
Mothe, intercepts the spiritual espousals with his 
paternal veto ; and soon the restless heart is found 
to be wandering after a fresh object. It was another 
gifted young cousin who this time wrought the dis- 
traction — a cousin who was worthy of Jeanne Marie's 
affection. But the young lovers were within the 
degrees of relationship prohibited by the Romish 
Church ; and as a dispensation would have been re- 
quired to smooth the difficulty, the paternal autho- 
rity forbade the earthly vows as it had previously 
forbidden the spiritual. This was a serious interrup- 
tion to her course of self-imposed dedication ; and 
she sorrowfully admits her declension in these 
words : 6i I began to seek in the creature what I had 
found in God. And Thou, my God, didst leave 
me to myself because I left Thee first. But such 
was thy goodness, that it seemed to me Thou didst 
leave me w T ith regret." Besides lending her ear to 
the pleadings of earthly affection, she, who had but 
the other day aspired to the bridal veil of the cloister, 
had now become conscious of her own remarkable 



246 THE SUCCESSFUL SUITOR. 

beauty; and with this consciousness had come an 
intoxicating sense of power. And so, for the time at 
least, the world had gotten the victory. 

Mademoiselle de la Mothe was but fifteen years 
of age when her father left his provincial home and 
took up his residence with his family in the gay 
capital. The tendency to centralisation in France 
was as conspicuous in 1663 as in 1860. Paris was 
the centre of France in everything, and Louis XIV. 
was the central luminary of the whole civil and poli- 
tical system. The showy and selfish autocrat had 
made himself the impersonation of French glory ; 
and the subservient people, worn by the costliness of 
victory, yet rejoicing in its shine, thought itself 
happy if it could catch but a stray glimmer of the 
light which irradiated from the throne. Louis was 
at this time a very fine gentleman of twenty-five 
years of age, of a right royal presence, though of low 
stature, possessed of many kingly graces, with a will 
which had power to move a whole nation, and with 
sagacity to choose fitting agents to do his lordly bid- 
ding, unless, in the sufficiency of his self-contained 
force, he did the work himself. It was to the Paris 
of Louis XIV. that the well-born young beauty of 
Montargis was introduced in her sixteenth year. 
Her parents intended her to shine ; and she was 
very willing to display the unusual brilliancy of her 
conversational gift, and the stately grace of her car- 
riage. Suitors abounded, and many advantageous 
offers of marriage were laid in form before M. de la 
Mothe ; but unfortunately he listened with most 
favour to an ungainly admirer of his fair daughter 
who was twenty-two years her senior, and a hopeless 
invalid. M. Guy on was a man who had risen into 
the ownership of very considerable wealth. His 
father was what we should now call a great civil 
engineer, the Brunei of his day. With great ability 



AN ALARMING INTRODUCTION, 247 

he had completed the first canal in France, the canal 
of Briare, which links the Seine and the Loire to- 
gether ; an enterprise commenced by the celebrated 
Sully. So important was this work in a national 
point of view, that Cardinal Kichelieu, who was the 
leading power at the day of its completion, and who 
dispensed patents of nobility or " lettres de cachet' 1 '' 
at will, sent one of the former to the successful 
engineer : he would probably have had one of the 
latter had he failed. The suitor who was now en- 
gaged with the authoritative M. de la Mo the in 
arranging articles of marriage with the beauty of 
sixteen, was the wealthy and ennobled son of this M. 
Jacques Guyon. She had not even caught a glimpse 
of her betrothed ; and yet she signed the articles in 
submission, without knowing to what she was put- 
ting her hand. It was usual for French fathers to 
act in this arbitrary manner — usual for French 
daughters to yield unquestioning obedience ; but 
hence frequently sprang up a hideous progeny of 
domestic evils. At length, three days before the 
bridal, she saw her future husband, saw also that 
there would be no community of feeling, no conge- 
niality of mind, and no sympathy of taste. It was 
an alarming introduction. They were married : and 
" No sooner," she writes, " was I at the house of my 
husband, than I perceived it would be for me a house 
of mourning." There was a widowed mother-in-law, 
who never admitted that she was the dowager in 
that house, but who churlishly kept her throne, and 
spurned the fair young intruder, who was insulted 
and harassed from morning to night. Every 
expression of sentiment or opinion was rudely re- 
pressed ; and so, retiring into the solitude of her 
own soul and within the oppressive atmosphere of 
silence, even Jeanne Marie's countenance, which had 
before been remarkable for its changing play, became 



248 THE SPIRITUAL " DIRECTOR. " 

fixed in defiant gloom or dissolved in tearful grief. 
She soon perceived that her own servants were set 
to watch her every movement, and that she must live 
under a complete system of domestic espionage; and 
then, cut off from her own family, friendless and 
alone, she at last remembered her forgotten Lord. The 
birth of her first child gave her a new and tendering 
interest which somewhat opened her heart to the 
love of God. Moreover there was a considerable 
loss of property about this time ; for Louis XIV., 
who found war and palace-building to be very ex- 
pensive tastes, held it convenient to resume a part 
of the revenues of the canal of Briare. Other chas- 
tenings followed in rapid succession ; her own mother 
died ; an Ursuline half-sister died ; and she was 
herself afflicted with severe illness. God was chas- 
tening whom He loved. Other influences were also 
brought to bear on her soul : the pious cousin re- 
turned from Cochin China on mission business, and 
encouraged her in her efforts after the religious 
life; an exiled English lady of great piety, who had 
accepted an asylum in the house of M. de la Mothe, 
but whose history is not explained, comforted the 
unhappy young wife ; and above all, a devout Fran- 
ciscan monk, who had found his own happiness in 
spiritual religion, was able to minister to hers. At 
the urgent entreaty of Madame Guyon, this simple- 
minded Franciscan became her " director;" an 
office which, in the Eomish Church, is sometimes, 
but not invariably, united with that of " confessor." 
It is easy to conceive what immense power such a 
position must give over the mind and the life of an 
enthusiastic woman. In this instance, and it is a 
rare one, the humble monk shrank from the as- 
sumption of spiritual authority over a woman of 
superior intellectual gifts, strong imagination, and 
dazzling attractions ; and Madame Guyon had to 



PEACE WITHIN AND TROUBLE AVITHOUT. 249 

employ earnest entreaties before he would undertake 
so difficult and responsible a case. However, the 
pious Franciscan in no wise abused his spiritual 
power, and his charge became peaceful and at rest, 
because anchored in the love of Christ her Saviour. 
Wholly to lose her own individuality of will in the 
Divine will became now the constant effort of her 
soul. A deep introversion of thought and a critical 
self-study were her favourite occupations. She was 
twenty years of age when this decisive change took 
place. All happiness from without had failed her; 
she must now cultivate that which would grow 
within ; and henceforth, instead of rebelling against 
the sharp trials of her domestic lot, she set herself to 
weed the little vineyard of her own heart, to tend 
and train the growth of all wholesome affections, and 
break the point of every thorn in her path. So lov- 
ing as well as lovely did she now become, that she 
would have bought her husband's jealous heart, were 
it not for the ungenerous home-influence which was 
continually misrepresenting the young wife's every 
action. Her efforts to aid the poor and to comfort 
the sick were distorted into reckless extravagance ; 
and the frequency with which she sought religious 
retirement in the neighbouring church was turned 
into an occasion of offence. Beyond the walls of her 
own prison-like home, Madame Guyon was greatly 
admired, and her society was much sought. Her 
talents were now recognised to be of a high order ; 
and her conversational power, recommended by the 
peculiar grace of her manner, gave her an influence 
and a fascination wherever she went. She was per- 
fectly conscious of this her power over hearts ; and 
now, after two years of a very self-denying walk 
before the world, she again found that the world in 
its turn was beginning to exert its sway over her 
own soul. Therefore no terms could be kept with 



250 THE SICK BEAUTY AND THE MIRROR. 

it, no compromises must be allowed, no concessions 
made ; for she was not of a nature that could live 
with safety on border-land. It was now the year 
1670, and she was still but twenty- two years old, 
when God saw fit to remove one great temptation 
out of her way by visiting her with the small-pox, 
that terrible and at this time wholly unmitigated 
disease. He spared her life ; for there was much 
work for her to do in bringing thousands of souls to 
the knowledge of Christ ; but He took away the 
shine of her beauty, that she might do her work the 
better. As soon as the virulence of the disease had 
abated, and the sufferer could sit up in bed, she sent 
for a mirror and looked. Yes ; a great change had 
come over her : the brilliant beauty was sorely 
dimmed, if not gone; but there was a bounding 
sense of freedom in her soul which taught her that 
" the snare was broken and she had escaped." There 
was a voice within her heart which seemed to say, 
"If I would have had thee fair, I would have left 
thee as thou wert." " As soon as I was able," she 
says, " I did not hesitate to go to the city, and to 
places which I had been accustomed to frequent, in 
order that my humiliation might triumph in the very 
spots where my unholy pride had been exalted." 
This was doing penance ; but penance was the luxury 
of religious enthusiasm, not the healthy action of 
religious principle. A deeper trial followed ; her 
second boy, the delight of her lonely heart, took the 
dreadful disorder and died, while his mother reco- 
vered. About this time Madame Guyon's mental 
activity found expression in poetry ; and a very 
graceful gift of hymn-writing was developed. Our 
own Cowper has rendered many of these hymns into 
his pure verse ; they are loving, imaginative, devout, 
and thoroughly representative of her own mind. A 
spiritual friendship was formed at this time with 



MADAME GUYON A WIDOW. 251 

Fran gois de la Combe, a pious Barnabite, who becomes 
much associated with Madame Guyon's after-history, 
first as her disciple, then as her fellow-worker and 
sharer in her persecutions ; a man whom Louis XIV. 
thought of sufficient importance to be imprisoned 
for nearly twenty-seven years in the terrible Vin- 
cennes, the Isle of Oleron, and other places, on 
account of his heretical order of piety. In 1672, the 
death of the old M. de la Mothe, and the loss of a 
little daughter, increased the isolation of her spirit. 
In 1676, when she was twenty-eight years old, 
Madame Guyon's morose and sternly-prejudiced 
husband left her a widow. In the midst of the suf- 
ferings of his last illness, she had made an earnest 
attempt at reconciliation, and to her great joy they 
made their peace. " It is I who have done wrong 
rather than you," said he; "it is I who beg your 
pardon. I did not deserve you." From this time 
she insisted upon exercising a wife's privilege of 
waiting upon her sick husband for the remainder of 
his painful days; and by her tender devotion she 
kept his heart so that no evil influence was again 
able to divide them. She was not even set at naught 
when she ventured to speak to him about his soul's 
salvation ; and at evening time there was light in 
that dark chamber. The administration of consi- 
derable wealth now devolved upon a sensitive and 
imaginative young woman, who had hitherto showed 
no symptom of worldly wisdom, and but little of that 
invaluable working quality, common sense. But a 
wonderful amount of repressed power of various 
kinds now came into play. The pent-up forces of 
her mind were making fresh channels for themselves 
in all directions ; and although she lived a life of 
close retirement during the early years of her widow- 
hood, she was successfully administering a large 
estate; acting as arbitrator for others in a vexed 



252 THE CONFESSOR IN THE DARK CHURCn. 

question involving very large interests ; learning 
Latin, in order to make herself mistress of the dif- 
ferent treatises on education, which were all written 
in that language ; writing graceful and impassioned 
religious poetry; carrying on an extensive corre- 
spondence ; and composing fervent, eloquent, but 
somewhat mystical works on some of the highest 
topics of faith or the most profound matters of in- 
ward experience. She again felt a strong temptation 
to enter a Benedictine convent, there to pass a life 
of unbroken introversion of spirit ; but she looked 
upon her three children, and decided as every Chris- 
tian mother is bound to decide. 

Various offers of second marriage were declined, 
and she was calmly fulfilling her home-duties, when 
a singular incident, springing from that suspicious 
quarter, the confessional, turned the current of this 
remarkable woman's life. She had gone into Paris 
from her country residence, and entering a very dark 
church, had looked round for a confessor. She espied 
one through the appropriate dimness of the place, 
and going up to him, she tried to relieve her sensi- 
tive conscience of its weight of transgressions by 
pouring into his ear the penitential repinings of a 
humble spirit conscious of many an inward departure 
from the perfect law of holiness. It was a sorry 
resource ; but she was groping her way through the 
dark places of popery. Presently the unknown 
confessor astonished her by saying, " I know not who 
or what you are, but I feel a strong inward impulse 
to exhort you to do what the Lord has made known 
that He requires of you. I have nothing else to say." 
" Father, I am a widow," replied the devotee; "a 
widow, and I have little children. What else could 
God require of me but to take fitting care of them ?" 
" I know nothing about this," said, very truly, the 
old confessor; "but, you know, if God manifests 



THE CALL TO THE MISSION-LIFE. 253 

that He requires something of you, there is naught 
in the world which should hinder you from doing his 
will. One must leave even children to do this will." 
It was enough; and she received the word as an 
intimation from above. In this exalted state of 
feeling she turned her mind towards the poor moun- 
taineers of Savoy and Switzerland, whose homes 
nestle in the craggy hollows of the Alpine ranges, or 
cluster in little towns at their feet ; she must go and 
teach the mountaineers. With this view she decided 
on proceeding to Gex, a small town which trails its 
one steep street along the foot of the Jura, eleven 
miles from Geneva. At the present day Gex is 
famous for its merino sheep and its goats'-milk 
cheeses. Its primitive inhabitants have carefully 
swathed with their vines the foot of Mount St. 
Claude, which lifts its forehead far above them 
amongst the brother-heights of the Jura. Madame 
Guyon's desire was to lead a missionary life in her 
own land or the land of her neighbours, as she could 
not labour in Cochin China or Siam — fields which 
had floated mirage-like before her mind ever since 
her eye had followed that track of light which the 
young cousin had left behind him as he journeyed 
through Montargis on his Orient mission. And yet 
she had not been idle at home. In the famine- 
winter of 1680 she had fed the hungry poor of Paris 
with hundreds of loaves every week, and had set 
numbers of boys and girls to work for charity's sweet 
sake. And still she found that her possessions les- 
sened not, but increased with the giving; whereupon 
she records as the result of her experience that "True 
charity, instead of wasting the substance of the giver, 
blesses, increases, and multiplies it profusely." 

In the summer of 1681 she set forth on her Alpine 
mission. But she was becoming an object of suspi- 
cion, and her movements were watched. The Arch- 



254 THE CROSS AND THE CROWN. 

bishop of Paris might have obtained at any moment 
an order to lodge the fair missionary in the Bastile, 
or else in that royal house of revels at Vincennes, 
which had now put on the hard frown of a state prison. 
So the lady determined to evade lettres de cachet or 
commands from spiritual superiors ; and as scent 
does not lie on the waters, she eluded pursuit by 
silently gliding along the Seine in a boat. She had 
left the two boys under care at Paris ; but her little 
daughter, afterwards Countess of Vaux, and later in 
life Duchess of Sully, now a bright child of five 
years, was her companion. Her cortege consisted of 
a pious " Sister Gamier" and two maid-servants. 
The widow, still a lovely, graceful, and gracious 
woman of thirty-four, sat and pondered on the un- 
known life to which her act of dedication had bound 
her ; while the little Parisian maiden of five years 
was catching from the surface of the river the stray 
twigs and vagrant leaves that were floating down- 
ward upon the current from their native woods. By 
some strange childish fancy, she was forming them 
into miniature crosses, and then, silently rising, she 
fastened them on the dress of her unconscious 
mother. At last, bringing back her mind from her 
questionings of the unshaped future, the mother 
looked, and saw that she was " literally covered with 
crosses" She meekly accepted the parable, and 
thought she saw that henceforth she was to sit in the 
shadow of the cross of Christ. The devout " Sister 
Gamier " also saw the symbolic meaning of the inci- 
dent, and said, " The doings of the child appear to be 
mysterious. My pretty one, give me some crosses 
too." " No," said the child, " they are all for the 
dear maman." But the prophetic scene was not 
over yet : presently the little maiden, capturing some 
stray river-flowers, wove them into a chaplet, and 
placing the wet wreath on her mother's head, said, 



BROTHER AN8ELM THE HERMIT. 255 

" And after the cross you shall be crowned." The 
story reads like a poetic fiction ; but it is strictly true. 
At Corbeil the lady stopped her boat in order to 
visit the old Franciscan monk who had helped her 
in her search after peace, and who had shrunk with 
so much alarm from the spiritual directorship of the 
beautiful enthusiast. Having left the Seine at 
Melun, she now travelled by land; but at Annecy she 
must stop to hold some mysterious religious services 
at the tomb of her favourite saint, Francis de Sales ; 
for, highly spiritualised as was her mind, there was 
still much of the material left on which superstition 
loves to hang its fantastic cobwebs. On arriving at 
Gex, her new home at the root of the Jura, she was 
made happy in being assigned by the bishop to the 
spiritual care of her friend Father la Combe, who 
was now to be her director. At the first she quietly 
devoted herself to the hard labours of a true sister of 
charity, nursing the sick, making ointments, and 
teaching little mountain children. But she soon felt 
an impulse to invite almost every one she met to 
enter upon the " inward path/'' as she mysteriously 
called it, meaning sanctification, or a life of holiness. 
But she never seems to have treated the subject in a 
clear Scriptural way. She threw an illuminated mist 
over everything, which must have sorely confused 
simple souls, and through which only those could 
see who had an eye like her own. And yet her 
words were so earnest, and her life so full of love, 
that conversions everywhere attended upon her steps, 
and long became the list of her disciples. At the 
desire of Father la Combe, she accompanied him to 
Thonon, and took up her residence at the Ursuline 
convent. Near this town, on the shore of the Geneva 
lake, she found a hermit called Anselm, whom the 
people revered as the very impersonation of sanctity. 
He had been living for twelve years in a lonely little 



256 TIIE BISHOP AND THE LADY. 

hermitage, wearing a shirt of hair, and lying on the 
bare ground in his Augustine habit. His food was 
pulse softened with oil, or else bread moistened with 
water from the spring ; and there in his dreary home, 
in the solemn presence of the mountains, surrounded 
only with the stirring life of tempests, or the gentler 
movement of sunlight and shadow, breeze and bird, 
he was supposed to be living an existence of which 
prayer was the only articulate voice. The fervid 
imagination of such a woman as Madame Guyon 
was sure to be captivated by a scene like this ; and 
great was her delight when the hermit declared 
God had revealed to him that both Father la Combe 
and herself were " destined for the guidance and aid 
of souls ; but that this mission of God would not be 
fulfilled without various and strange crosses." Thus 
the lonely hermit of the lake had, in his mysterious 
predictions, surrounded his visitor with " crosses," 
just as the little daughter had done in her dreamy 
child-play on the smooth surface of the Seine. They 
were now beginning to spring up abundantly in the 
path of this remarkable woman. The bishop had 
heard of the novelties set forth in the teaching of 
the eloquent lady and in the preaching of the earnest 
father ; so he tried to silence the former by pressing 
her to settle her fortune and herself in the religious 
house of Gex, and the latter by menacing him with 
suspension and degradation — right Romish strokes 
of policy. But neither of the delinquents would 
yield to man's authority in matters of conscience. 
One of the offensive novelties in Madame Guyon's 
conversational teaching was her perpetual reference 
to that Book with which she had at first become ac- 
quainted when a girl of twelve years, in her little 
convent-chamber at the Benedictines' in Montargis. 
She had never forgotten that Bible ; and to the 
Bible she referred her hearers. And so the report 



PETTY PERSECUTIONS. 257 

was on the wing that the French lady's doctrine was 
heretical ; while at the same time her character was 
grievously maligned. An offended priest and a jea- 
lous friar now laid their plans together, and a system 
of petty persecution began, which was as mean as it 
was cruel. Some of the nuns had been gained over, 
who probably worked the machinery which now 
troubled the lady's midnight slumbers. Horrible 
figures glared in at the window of her cell, or took 
their place in the very room ; the windows were 
smashed in the dead of the night, and hideous 
sounds raved all around her. Her letters were way- 
laid ; and the priest had an interesting pile of twenty- 
two of them on his table at once, whereby he pos- 
sessed himself of her plans, her feelings, and her 
friends. These worrying besetments had small 
power to ruffle her settled peace ; but gathering 
from such symptoms that her work in Gex was done, 
she embarked in a little boat with the child and the 
maid-servants, and landing at Thonon, tried again 
to find a home in an Ursuline convent. There, in 
her cell, with her open Bible spread before her, she 
received the visits of those who were inquiring the 
way to heaven; while the little Parisian maiden 
played with the young peasant-children that came 
down from their mountains, and learned their rude 
speech. Influenced by Madame Gruyon, little knots 
of religious persons were forming themselves around 
her ; but the leading powers of the place, finding 
that numbers of pious books were in circulation, 
gathered them all together and made a grand fire of 
them in the public square of Thonon. A priest of 
the congregation of the Oratory, who was guilty of 
offering up extemporaneous prayers in the fervour of 
the evening devotions, was seized and publicly beaten 
with rods. In the mean time Madame Guyon 
laboured without ceasing in the way of outward 



258 THE CHALET ATTACKED. 

beneficence as well as of spiritual exhortation. 
Father la Combe and herself established a hospital 
at Thonon, the first in that whole region ; and while 
she furnished it with abounding comforts, she 
narrowed her personal expenses by retiring into a 
mere hut, not much more luxurious than the her- 
mitage of Brother Anselm of the Lake. It was pro- 
vided with the barest rudiments of civilised life ; and 
the mistress of great wealth, which she was spending 
on others, climbed to her little chamber by a ladder. 
But the petty persecutions which spared Brother 
Anselm, whose orthodoxy was unsuspected, pursued 
the heretical missionary to her rude chalet. Stones 
were flung through her windows and fell at her feet ; 
the little garden which, with woman's love of liowers, 
she had tastefully tended, was torn up at night ; and 
the arbour, made for the rare moments of repose, 
was rudely destroyed. Loud voices in the darkness, 
uttering dreadful threats, made night a season of 
sleepless watching, and, before long, notice to quit 
the diocese was served upon the stranger lady. The 
same command was issued against Father la Combe ; 
and again the little party set forth on their wander- 
ing. Turin was the next tarrying-place, and, to 
reach it, Mount Cenis had to be crossed by a mere 
path such as peasants with their mules had trodden 
down. But that luxury of the righteous, Christian 
friendship, beckoned the exiles through the wild 
gorges of the mountain pass ; and there was rest 
for the sole of their foot in the capital of the Duke 
of Savoy. The Marchioness of Prunai, sister of 
the Secretary of State, had offered an asylum to 
the wanderers. After a few months of happy re- 
pose, Madame Guyon thought herself called to 
labour in her own country, France. It was in 1684 
that she ventured to turn her face homeward ; and, 
traversing Switzerland, she paused at Grenoble to 



CEOWDS OF DISCIPLES. 259 

see if there were work to be done in that place. 
She had been sitting quietly in her chamber but a 
few days, when it was noised abroad that the fair 
teacher of the " apostolic life " was in the city ; 
and, to use her own words, " People flocked to- 
gether from all sides, far and near. Friars, priests, 
men of the world, girls, wives, widows, all came, 
one after another, to hear what was to be said. So 
great was the interest felt, that for some time I was 
wholly occupied from six in the morning till eight 
in the evening in speaking of God, God was with 
me. Many were the souls which submitted to Him 
at this time, He only knows how many." For 
instance, nearly all the members of a " religious 
house," from the aged Father Superior, and the 
master of the novitiates, down to the youngest 
amongst the novitiates themselves, came under the 
power of the new influence. Again, a young Knight 
of Malta, won by her conversation, abandoned his 
chivalrous order, and became " a preacher of the 
Gospel of Christ." Numbers of nuns and monks, a 
canon, a grand vicar, and several priests, were 
amongst the converts. Madame Guyon at the same 
time was writing her " Short Method of Prayer ; " 
while the correspondence which she was constantly 
carrying on was amazingly voluminous, comprising 
barons, marquises, ambassadors, and the four 
duchess-daughters of the famous minister Colbert, 
the Sully of his time. She was also writing Com- 
mentaries on the Bible, which amounted to twenty 
octavo volumes. One of the events of her stay at 
Grenoble was a visit to the Grande Chartreuse, in 
its well-nigh inaccessible retreat. The echoes of the 
mountains had forewarned the monks of the coming 
visitor; and the old prior, Father Innocentius, 
accompanied by his stern family, paced down the 
rugged gorge to meet her. It was a marvellous act 



269 THE GRANDE CHARTREUSE. 

of condescension ; but it was safer to encounter the 
lady where the rocks would fling back her heretical 
words. In this stony presence-chamber the learned 
father ventured to converse ; yet when the teacher 
revealed her spiritual views of the " inward path " to 
happiness and heaven, that macerated troop of men, 
who fasted eight months of the year, and abstained 
from animal food during the other four, were greatly 
offended. " I immediately expressed my suspicions 
of the soundness of her views, and that in very 
strong terms," writes the wounded Father Innocen- 
tius. So the heroine threaded her way back through 
the savage ravines, and the Prior of the Grande 
Chartreuse became one of her strongest opponents. 
A violent opposition at last broke out against 
Madame Guyon in Grenoble. Her enemies said 
she must be a sorceress, and that she attracted 
souls by some magic influence, diabolical in kind ; 
and that, as to her character, she coined false money 
in order to meet her large expenditure; for a 
hospital had sprung up at her bidding here as at 
Thonon. Again she thought it best to avoid the 
bursting of the storm ; and leaving her young 
daughter in the Ursuline convent, she set forth 
afresh on the wide world, without plan or place of 
refuge. This was early in 1686. Taking the direc- 
tion of the Rhone, the wanderer embarked on that 
highway of France, and at length arrived at Mar- 
seilles. She reached the city one morning: "And 
that very afternoon," she says, "all was in uproar 
against me." Driven from Marseilles, she took 
the way of the sea, and landed at Genoa. Strange 
hardships beset the lonely woman on her journey 
to Turin ; designing muleteers, suspicious hostel- 
ries, and, above all, armed bandits, four in number, 
whom she seems to have subdued with one of those 
sunlight smiles which had brought upon her the 



AT PATHS AGAItf. 261 

imputation of dealing in magic arts : "I smiled 
upon them, and made a slight bow of the head. 
As soon as I had saluted them in this manner, in a 
moment God made them change their design. 
Having pushed each other off, they respectfully 
saluted me, and with an air of compassion, unusual 
to such persons, retired. I was immediately struck 
in the heart with a close conviction that it was 
thine especial influence, my Lord, a stroke of 
thine own right hand ; for Thou hadst other de- 
signs for me than that I should die by the hands of 
robbers." And doubtless it was the good hand of 
God which rescued the fugitive, and not the magic 
of her smile. At Vercelli she again met with her 
spiritual director, Father la Combe ; and, after a 
brief stay at Turin, she returned with him, first to 
Grenoble, and then to Paris, completing her five 
years' mission. She reached the capital in July, 
1686, when she was thirty-eight years of age, 

A life of another sort now opened before Madame 
Guyon. Received into the very highest circles, 
amongst ministers of state and their wives, grave 
doctors of the Sorbonne, witty dukes and sparkling 
duchesses, she everywhere carried her lofty standard 
of personal holiness, and gained extraordinary in- 
fluence over minds of the highest intellectual order. 
Indeed, one of the French encyclopsedists says of 
Madame Guyon, " She had a mind that was made 
for the world." In the mean time her fellow-labourer, 
Father la Combe, was suddenly seized while at 
dinner, on the authority of a lettre de cachet^ 
readily obtained by his enemies from Louis XIV., 
and flung into the terrible Bastile. Then com- 
menced that incarceration for life which ran through 
the dreary twenty-seven years before spoken of. 
The only boon which was ever granted to this pious 
man was the liberty to die in a hospital instead of a 



262 FIFTY THOUSAND EXILED FAMILIES. 

dungeon, when the tardy hour of emancipation came. 
The storms were again gathering around Madame 
Guyon likewise. Father la Mothe, her half-brother, a 
priest of the Barnabites, had the chief hand in stirring 
up the caldron of persecution ; and Louis XIV. 
was very ready to listen to any charges against a 
woman who appeared to be re-establishing that 
Protestantism which he had just driven out of 
France. The Edict of Nantes had been revoked ; he 
had sent his dragoons as Eomish missionaries 
throughout the provinces, who had swept the land 
clean of heresy; and the best men and women of 
France, people of high birth, skilled artisans, and 
whole industrial communities, were living in forced 
exile, many of them enriching our England with 
new and ingenious arts. Fifty thousand families, a 
noble army of Protestants, went into banishment ; 
and the " great monarch" looked around with blind 
complacency upon a uniform Church and an im- 
poverished land; forgetting that he was thereby 
making a gift to his neighbours of just so much 
healthy industry, with those gifts of cunning in- 
vention and tasteful design which are national and 
peculiar to the people of France. When Louis 
learnt that a high-born woman was holding private 
religious assemblies, contrary to the practice and 
rules of the Catholic Church, that she " maintained 
heretical opinions," and that moreover she had been 
" publishing a dangerous book containing sentiments 
similar to those of the ' Spiritual Guide ' of Michael 
de Molinos, which had been condemned by papal 
decree" (for such were the charges against her), 
he gladly granted a lettre de cachet; and she was 
imprisoned in the Convent of St. Marie, in the 
suburb of St. Antoine, in the winter of 1688. At 
the same time a number of distinguished persons 
who had been guilty of holding friendship with the 



MARRIAGE OF HER DAUGHTER. 263 

captive were driven into exile. Here, in the convent- 
prison, in a little cell closely locked and barred, she 
patiently sat for eight months, composed hymns and 
wrote her autobiography. She had for some time 
lost sight of her young daughter, now a girl of 
twelve, who had been forcibly separated from her 
mother. The unconscious young prophetess, who 
had made the crosses and woven the crown, was now 
an object of interest to designing people, as a con- 
siderable amount of family property had been settled 
upon her ; for Madame Ghiyon, before she set out on 
pilgrimage, had made ample provision for all her 
three children. There was a sagacious Marquis of 
Chanvalon, a man as bad in his practice as he was 
loose in his creed, who had a view of securing the 
young heiress by an early betrothal. The king, who 
saw in the scheme a satisfactory mode of preventing 
property from flowing into heretical channels, gave 
his fatherly sanction ; and an offer of freedom was 
made to the imprisoned mother if she would con- 
sent to this consignment of her little daughter. 
But her answer was this : " I can never buy my 
liberty at the expense of sacrificing my child." At 
last some influential ladies brought the case of the 
imprisoned mother before that singular personage 
Madame de Maintenon. Austere as she was in her 
religious sentiments, she had sufficient perception 
to see that Madame Guyon was the victim of preju- 
dice, and sufficient power over the mind of the king 
to procure her release. The group of duchesses im- 
mediately clustered round her again, and she was rein- 
stated in her former position in distinguished society. 
In 1690 her daughter, still a child of fourteen, was 
married to the Count de Vaux, son of the Marquis de 
Belle- Isle ; and the mother found shelter under the 
roof of the high-born and well-disposed son-in-law. 
Immediately after her deliverance from the 



264 FRIENDSHIP WITH FENELOtf. 

convent-prison, Madame Guyon had made the ac- 
quaintance of the Abbe de Fenelon, afterwards the 
justly-celebrated Archbishop of Cambrai. The 
foundations of that Christian friendship which was 
to live for the remainder of their days were in- 
stantly laid betwixt these two congenial souls — laid 
in the harmony of their moral character, and in the 
sympathy of their religious creed. With intellectual 
endowments of a far higher order than those of 
Madame Guyon, with a knowledge of literature to 
which she never aspired, and with a breadth of mental 
cultivation to which she was a stranger, there was 
nevertheless much that was in perfect harmony 
between these two enthusiastic apostles of spiritual 
religion. He was three years her junior. His con- 
nection with a depraved court as tutor of princes, and 
especially of theheir-apparent, theunpromisingyoung 
Duke of Burgundy, grandson of Louis XIV., had in 
no wise impaired the graceful simplicity of his bearing 
and the chastened refinement of his mind. Serene 
and contemplative by nature, he was predisposed to 
adopt those mystical views which the world has 
agreed to distinguish by the name of Pietism ; but 
though there was a gentle fervour in his piety which 
was in keeping with everything he said or did, his 
enthusiasm was of a much less impulsive, ardent, 
and eccentric nature than that of his friend Madame 
Guyon. Within the iron-barred doors of the Romish 
Church, like her, he remained all his days ; but, 
though in it, he was not of it ; and the two friends 
lived the life, and spoke the language, and ate the 
bread of exiles, less at home on earth than in heaven. 
About this time, 1692, a singular association 
sprang up beween two very dissimilar women — 
Madame Guyon and Madame de Maintenon. It 
has been mentioned that the influence of the latter 
had procured the liberation of the former from the 






MADAME DE MAINTENON. 265 

prison of the Convent of St. Marie; and after her 
release, the persecuted lady had paid a visit of 
gratitude to the remarkable person who, at this 
time, ruled from behind the throne the destinies of 
France. Madame de Maintenon had been privately 
married to the king ; but her position had been 
one which had wholly compromised her character, 
and she was miserable in the midst of splendour, 
gloomy in the blaze of power. The vicissitudes of 
her life had been striking : she was born in a prison 
— the prison of Niort, whither her father had been 
sent by the lordly Richelieu ; yet in the decline 
of life she was the virtual occupant of a throne. 
Married at sixteen to Scarron, who was old, de- 
formed, and a sort of court buffoon, she was again 
married at fifty to the mighty monarch of France, 
who was several years younger than herself. Born 
a Protestant, she became an austere Romanist, and 
at the death of the king she retired to St. Cyr, a 
far -worn and most weary woman. If it be true 
that the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, which 
exiled 50,000 Protestant families, was the work 
of the woman whose commanding intellect ruled 
the mind of Louis, the anomalies in her history are 
increased by the fact that she often employed her 
vast influence on behalf of those who were perse- 
cuted for their faith. 

Madame de Maintenon, ill at rest herself, was 
irresistibly attracted by the heavenly serenity which 
lived on the face of Madame Guy on. Sending for 
the suspected heretic to Versailles, she often com- 
muned with her concerning the source of her peace. 
Madame de Maintenon had some years before this 
time founded the famous institution of St. Cyr, for 
the. education of young girls of superior birth, but 
of fallen fortunes. Here 250 nobly-born girls were 
educated free of expense until they reached their 



266 poison. 

twentieth year ; and in this fine institution, two op 
three miles distant from Louis's magnificent Ver- 
sailles, the tired woman of the world and the happy 
Christian lady used frequently to meet. The con- 
versations were long and confidential ; but it is 
known that the successful but weary worldling used 
to listen eagerly while her companion told her 
the beautiful story of redeeming love, alike suited to 
the sinner and to the saint. She even encouraged 
her to labour amongst the pupils, and seemed to be 
well pleased when a movement, which in modern 
times would be called a religious revival, followed 
upon the exhortations of the winning teacher. But 
the enemies of Madame Guyon- never left her long 
at peace ; and frightful means were at this time re- 
sorted to in order to rid society of her extraordinary 
influence. One day she was seized with the most 
intense pain ; and, sending for her physicians, they 
immediately pronounced that she had been poisoned. 
Without instant remedies she would have died in a 
few hours. A man-servant, who had been employed 
to work out this wicked scheme, immediately dis- 
appeared, and was never heard of again ; but proofs 
remained that he was merely an agent in the hands 
of others. In 1693 she was visited by Bossuet, who 
came to inquire for himself what this new doctrine 
which was filling the world might be. Bossuet, by 
his commanding talents and stately eloquence, was 
now the foremost man in the French Church. Pious, 
after the approved type of Eomish orthodoxy, he 
was sternly unbending towards any dissent from 
Eomish dogmas. It was a formidable ordeal for a 
woman to hold a conference for the greater part of 
a day with one of the finest minds in France ; but 
she maintained her ground ; and the great man 
appears to have left her with the conviction that her 
powers, both of thinking and speaking, were such 



MADAME GUYON BEFORE THE BISHOPS. 267 

ss to make her a person dangerous to the well-being 
of his Church. Finding that her moral character 
as well as her doctrines had been traduced, Madame 
Guyon proposed to the king, through the medium 
of Madame de Maintenon, that both should be sub- 
jected to inquiry before a commission appointed by 
his majesty himself. Louis immediately selected 
Bossuet, Bishop of Meaux, Tronson, Superior of St. 
Sulpitius, and Noailles, Bishop of Chalons, after- 
wards a cardinal. Alone she stood before these 
men of power and place, and gave her reasons for 
the hope that was in her. The commission met at 
Issy ; and their report on her case, in the form of 
thirty-four propositions, became the material for the 
endless polemical debates of the day, under the 
name of the " Articles of Issy." She was not con- 
demned; but it was arranged that she should take 
up her abode in the Convent of St. Marie, at Meaux, 
in order that she might be kept under the super- 
vision of Bossuet himself. As usual, she stole the 
hearts of the prioress and nuns of St. Marie. After 
a while we find her hiding away from a fresh perse- 
cution in some obscure lodging in the Faubourg St. 
Antoine. The police was evidently not in such fine 
training in the seventeenth century as in the nine- 
teenth; and her hiding-place, where she breathed 
in peace with her own faithful servant and disciple, 
the girl La Gautiere, was undiscovered for five 
months. At last Madame de Maintenon, who had 
withdrawn her countenance from the innovator, 
wrote to Noailles, now Archbishop of Paris, in these 
words : " The king orders me, sir, to inform you that 
Madame Guyon is arrested. What would you think 
it best to do with this woman, with her friends, and 
with her papers? Write to the king immediately." 
And presently " this woman," who was so formidable 
to Church and State, was thrown, by order of Louis 



268 THE BASTILE. 

himself, into the state prison of Vincennes. This was 
in the middle of January, 1696 ; and the faithful La 
Gautiere shared the cell with her mistress. There 
in the great old castle, guarded by lofty walls, 
deep ditches, and dark forest, she wrote hymns, 
which La Gautiere " learnt by heart as fast as she 
made them ; " and mistress and maid taught the 
little cell to ring with the praises of God. " It 
sometimes seemed to me/' says the mistress, " as 
if I were a bird whom the Lord had placed in a 
cage, and that I had now nothing to do but to 
sing." " I passed my time in great peace, content 
there to spend the remainder of my life, if such 
should be the will of God." After nearly a year 
within the walls of Vincennes, the captive was 
removed to the prison of a convent near Paris. 
Her power over minds again became conspicuous 
amongst the people who approached her cell, and 
jealous alarms were again excited. In consequence 
of this activity, her opponents extorted from her a 
signature to a paper by which she bound herself to 
cease from the like spiritual labours, to hold no 
conversations, write no letters, and receive no visits, 
without express permission from the authorities. 
This was hard bondage to one of Madame Guyon's 
nature; but she was now helpless in the strong 
hand of power. In 1698 she was transferred, by 
order of the king, to one of the towers of the dreaded 
Bastile. The very name suggests visions of horror 
and of gloomy despair. She was now fifty years 
of age ; and for four years she existed in solitary 
confinement within a cell cased in walls twelve feet 
thick, cut off from the echoes of the outer life by 
double doors each three inches in thickness. There 
was a world of misery within these walls which no 
pen can trace, and no mind has comprehended. 
A register was kept in which the names of the 



MAN OP THE IRON MASK." 269 

prisoners, and the day when they crossed the 
threshold, were set down; and against the name of 
the captive stood the name of the tower and the 
number of the cell in which the living soul was to 
be entombed. Every article of property was taken 
from them as they entered, excepting the barest 
sufficiency of clothing ; and then the great oak 
doors closed upon them, and they looked around: 
a grated window, a grated chimney, a pallet-bed, 
a table and chair, an earthen pitcher and basin. 
a broom, a candlestick and tinder-box; life was 
reduced to very bare elements. Madness some- 
times came, and gave wild wings to the mind, gave 
strange scope and space ; idiotcy sometimes crept 
like a faint grey mildew over the intellect, and 
under its cover childhood came back and toyed 
vacantly with the poor playthings that made up 
the sorry furniture of existence ; old age hastened 
its steps, and came before its time like an early 
winter, heaping up snows where there should have 
been summer-flowers in their beauty, or autumn 
fruits in their golden prime ; tall and strong men 
stooped like reeds that have bent before a wind 
that was swept by, and never can straighten them- 
selves again ; sometimes fever piled fuel on the 
hidden fires, and burnt out the life of man in swift 
destruction ; and sometimes hope came gleaming 
in with, the dawn through the iron squares of the 
grating, rising high with noonday, fading with the 
twilight, mixing with the darkness that was again 
creeping down the wall, and dying out at midnight. 
Professor Upham, whose Life of Madame Guyon 
has furnished a large part of the facts which have 
been woven into this short biographical narrative, 
has calculated that in a dungeon not far from that 
occupied by this Christian lady, was confined at 
this very time " The Man of the Iron Mask ; " and 



270 THE 10MB KEPT ITS SECRETS. 

that when she was led into her cell, he must have 
been existing in his for thirty-seven years ! Every- 
thing is mere surmise connected with that dark 
enigma, the Bastile, and people have wearied them- 
selves with guessing at the secrets buried in its 
great catacomb of mortal life; but it is supposed 
that the countenance of this unknown being in the 
mask bore too strong a resemblance to that head 
which wore the crown of France ; that perhaps he 
was twin-brother of the mighty Louis, and so must 
be built up in the Bastile, lest he should try to walk 
forth into power, or undermine the throne. And 
for what reason was the delicate woman immured, 
whose story we have been following perhaps with less 
of whole-hearted approbation than of love and of sym- 
pathy ? It was because she bore too close a resem- 
blance, in the lineaments of her character, to Him 
" of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is 
named." She had those features which could not 
be mistaken — that family likeness which distinguishes 
all the true children of the kingdom. And therefore 
she was held to be a dangerous character, and 
must be walled up, lest she too should walk forth 
into power, and undermine the altar and the throne. 
We know scarcely anything of the history of 
Madame Guyon's life in the Bastile. An oath was 
extorted from every prisoner that he would never 
reveal what he saw or heard within those walls. 
The living tomb was to keep its own secrets. But 
scraps of stories have crept out through the chinks, 
hinting at spiders petted until they became beloved 
associates ; of caged imagination busying itself 
with arraying in graceful patterns the bits of wood 
from the fagot of fuel ; of those to whom action 
was an essential condition of being pouring the 
water all day long from the earthen pitcher into the 
earthen basin, from the earthen basin back into 



TI1E RECREATIONS OF THE BASTILE. 271 

the earthen pitcher — there was motion here, there 
was noise, and there was splash ; and no doubt this 
daily occupation saved the man from frenzy. 
Others found deep interest in counting over and 
over, in and out, up and down, the iron studs upon 
the oaken door; while the geometrician had the 
privilege of being able to measure his cell, and cal- 
culate the square inches of space which it enclosed. 
We have been told of one man who has declared 
that he should have gone off into utter madness " if 
it had not been for the corners of the room ;" there 
was an unspeakable relief in those angles, and the 
mmd took refuge there from the intolerable uni- 
formity of the straight walls. The advantage which 
a religious mmd would have over one not sustained 
by faith in the mercy of God, and trust in the love 
of the Saviour, is beyond all computation. Madame 
Guyon kept herself alive by prayer, and in this 
happy employ she found congenial occupation for 
heart and soul — prayer personal, and prayer inter- 
cessory lor the unknown prisoners who peopled the 
silent cells around her, were the business of her life in 
the Bastile. The poor faithful La Gautiere had been 
detained m solitary confinement at the state prison 
ot Vincennes after her mistress had been removed. 
There she had contrived to write some admirable 
letters to her friends, making her own ink with soot 
and water, and fashioning a bit of stick into a pen. 
But soon after the incarceration of her mistress in 
the Bastile, La Gautiere also became an inmate of 
one of its cells ; and in that cell she died. She was 
one of Madame Guyon's most fervent disciples ; a 
woman of considerable ability and of an excellent 
spirit, too good a pleader for her mistress and ex- 
pounder of her doctrines to be left at large. 

One stray gleam of intelligence respecting Madame 
Guyon's confinement in the Bastile reaches us 



272 THE TERM OF EXILE OVER. 

through a paragraph in the Memoirs of Dangeau. He 
says (writing from Versailles), " Nothing is talked of 
here but the Bishop of Meaux's (Bossuet's) last publi- 
cation against the Archbishop of Cambrai (Fenelon), 
in which the whole doctrine of Madame Guyon is 
exposed. This lady is in the Bastile, where M. de 
la Heine, chief of the police, has already interrogated 
her several times, by order of the king. She is said 
to defend herself with great ability and firmness." 

Four years of Bastile life had passed, and in 
1702 Madame Guyon was led out, not to liberty, 
but to banishment for life in the city of Blois. 
Wholly broken in health, her bodily sufferings 
severe, and her energies greatly subdued, she lived 
a quiet life of exile for fifteen years in that grand 
old city of the Loire, whose royal castle has been 
the abode of more than a hundred crowned heads 
and princes of France. In Blois she kept her little 
court, as so many kings had done before her ; but 
her levees consisted of religious-minded people, her 
own countrymen and foreigners, English, Ger- 
mans, and others, who came to catch a glimpse of 
the woman who had loved and suffered so much ; 
while the aged lady used to sum up the story of 
her life by saying, " If I am saved at last, it will 
be the free gift of God, since I have no worth and 
no merit of my own." " Nothing is greater than 
God, nothing is less than myself. God is rich, I am 
poor ; and yet, being rich in God, I want nothing. 
God is love." 

And thus, when she had completed her sixty- 
ninth year, on the 9th of June, 1717, died Jeanne 
Marie de la Mothe Guyon ; for the term of exile 
was over, and the home of rest was ready. 



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the Allied Powers and Russia. By E. H. Nolan, Ph.D., 
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FOR THE CAPTURE OF RICHMOND— 1864-1865. 

With an Outline of the Previous Course of the War. By John 

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LIFE OF THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D., 

HEAD MASTER OF RUGBV SCHOOL. 

By Emma Jane Worboise. 

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THE WEDGWOODS : 

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DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 

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HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

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History of the United States, 

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M ISCELLANEOUS LITERATU RE. 

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Shakspere's Complete Works, 

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Old World Worthies; or, Classical Biography. Selected 
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Women of History. By Eminent Writers. 

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Travels in Africa. The Life and Travels of Mungo Park. 
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The Sea-side Naturalist : Our-Door Studies in Marine 
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WORKS OF JOHN BUNYAN. 

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lustrated by 28 steel engravings, and numerous illustrations on wood. 
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large, clear type, with notes, by the Rev. Robert Philip. Illustrated with 
numerous steel engravings. 

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39 splendid engravings, many of which are from the 
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Pronouncing Bible Dictionary. 

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Works by the Rev, John Gumming, D.D. 

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THE HOLY BIBLE. 

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THE DEVOTIONAL FAMILY BIBLE. 

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ornamental Family Record. 
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GUIDE TO FAMILY DEVOTION. 

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a Devotional Exercise for the Morning and Evening of every day through- 
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" separately, 1 25 

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Christian Comfort. By the author of " Emblems of Jesus." 
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found, mental, spiritual, or physical. 
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Light on the Grave. By the author of " Christian Comfort." 
A book for the mourner and one full of consolation. 
.?. 

Glimpses of the Celestial City, and Guide to the Inherit- 
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Mechanics and Mechanism. By R. S. Burn. With about 

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A most Useful Work for Mechanics, Engineers, Architects, 

Surveyors, Builders, Designers, and others. 

IDemy Svo, upwards of 7,000 Illustrations, half bound, . $6 00 

The Imperial Journal of Literature and the Arts 
and Sciences, embracing at a moderate price the Materials 
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edge. The work is intended to avoid both the superficial and 
the abstract, and contains such solid and substantial infor- 
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render the various subjects as instructive as possible, up- 
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Dictionary of the English Language, containing above 

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MINING AND META LLURGY. 

MINES ANL> MINERS; 

Or, Underground Life. From the French of L. Simonin. Translated and 
Edited by H. W. Bristow, F.R.S., of the Geological Survey, Honorary 
Fellow of King's College, London. Illustrated with 160 Engravings on 
Wood, 20 Maps, Geologically Colored, and 10 Plates of Metals and Min- 
erals. 

One volume 8vo, extra cloth, $f? 50 

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COAL AND COAL MINING. 

An Elementary Account of Coal, with a General View of the Methods and 
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World, and the Various Precautions needed for the Preservation of Human 
Life. By Warington W. Smyth, M.A., F.R.S., President of the Geo- 
logical Society. Illustrated. 

One volume 8vo, cloth, $4- 00 

IRON AND STEEL MANUFACTURE. 

A Series of Papers on the Manufacture and Properties of Iron and Steel, with 
Reports on Iron and Steel in the Paris Exhibition of 1867, Reviews of the 
State and Progress of the Manufacture during the Years 1867 and 1868 ; 
and Descriptions of the Principal Iron and Steel Works in Great Britain, 
the Continent of Europe, and the United States. By Ferdinand Kohn, 
C.E. 81 pages of engravings and 282 pages of letterpress. 

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METALLURGY OF IRON. 

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of Assay, and Analyses of Iron Ores, Processes of Manufacture of Iron 
and Steel, etc. By H. Bauerman, F.G.S., Associate of the Royal School 
of Mines. With an Appendix on the Martin Steel Process by Abram S. 
Hewitt. Illustrated with numerous engravings. 

8vo, cloth, $2 50 

METALLURGY OF COFFER. 

An Introduction to the Methods of Seeking, Mining, Dressing, Assaying, and 
Smelting the Ores of Copper and Manufacturing its Alloys. By Dr. R. 
H. Lamborn. Illustrated. 

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METALLURGY OF SILVER AND LEAD. 

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Treating the Ores of Silver and Lead for their Constituents. By Dr. R. H. 
Lamborn. Illustrated. 

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ELECTRO-METALL URGY. 

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Mnspraffis Chemistry : Theoretical, Practical, and Analyti- 
cal. 1,000 Engravings on wood, and Portraits on steel of Distinguished 
Chemists. 
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Imperial Cyclopedia of Machinery : A Series of Plans, 

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Spinning Machinery, Grinding Mills, Tools, etc., all of the Newest and 
Most Approved Construction. By William Johnson, C.E. 

One volume imperial 4to, half morocco , - $50 00 

Cyclopedia of Machine and Hand Tools* A Series of 

Plans, Sections, and Elevations of the Most Approved Tools for Working 
in Iron, Wood, and other Materials. By Prof. W. J. Macquorn Ran- 
kine, C.E., LL.D. 

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Tredgold on the Steam Engine : Its Principles, Practice, 

and Construction. I. Marine Engines. II. Locomotive and Stationary 
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and Diagrams. 

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507 Mechanical Movements in Dynamics, Hydraulics, 

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trated and described. By Henry T. Brown, editor of the "American 
Artisan." 

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Modern Workshop Practice as Applied to Marine, Land, 

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Carpenter and Joiner's Assistant. By James NewlanGs, 
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dred Engravings on Wood, comprising Examples of some of 
the Best Timber Constructions in Great Britain, Continent of 
Europe, and America. 
One volume, imj^erial quarto, half morocco, . . $30 00 

Carpenter's Guide. By Peter Nicholson. A Complete Book 
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men in General. Enlarged and Improved Edition, by John 
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numerous Engravings. 
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Carpenter's Jlfeasure?\ By Peter Nicholson. A Practical 
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and Elevations. 
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2)ictiona?y of Technical Terms used by Architects, 
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Architecture* The Orders and their ^Esthetic Principles. By 
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